Croatia ranks 51st in the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking 2019 among the world's 63 leading economies, slipping seven spots from last year, the National Competitiveness Council (NVK) said on Thursday.

The ranking was topped by the United States, ahead of Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Hong Kong, Norway and the Republic of Korea.

The results were published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) from Lausanne, of which the NVK is a partner.

The IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking measures countries’ capacity and readiness to adopt and explore digital technologies as a key driver for economic transformation in business, government and wider society. It examines three factors: knowledge, technology and future readiness, and uses statistics and opinions of business leaders.

The study found that the factors positively affecting Croatia’s position in the ranking are knowledge (the pupil-teacher ratio in tertiary education, the number of women with degrees, the number of women researchers and high-technology patent grants) and technology (expenditure on research and development).

The weaknesses identified include international experience, foreign highly-skilled personnel, employee training, immigration laws, development and application of technology, agility of companies, use of big data and analytics, knowledge transfer, and private-public partnerships.

The considerable fall in the ranking shows Croatia’s lack of readiness to adopt technologies and create a stimulating environment to keep up with global, and especially digital, development, NVK president Ivica Mudrinic said.

It is high time we activated our resources in seeking solutions that will speed up our development and increase Croatia’s competitiveness, he added.