Bangladesh has ranked five places low than last year in the global human capital index.
The country now ranks 104th among 130 countries, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) in Chinese city at its Annual Meeting of New Champions — also known as ‘Summer Davos’ summit.
This index measures a country’s ability to nurture, develop and deploy talent for the economic growth. Finland topped the list.
In the last year’s report, Bangladesh gained the 99th position.
Among the South Asian countries, Sri Lanka’s position is 50 and Bhutan’s 91 though Bangladesh is ahead of India (105), Nepal (108) and Pakistan (118).
The report says the region’s most populous countries – Bangladesh, India and Pakistan – are with insufficient educational enrolment rates and poor-quality primary schools.
Their literacy rate is 83%, 89% and 75% respectively, far behind other emerging markets as well as their own lower-middle income group’s average.
The three countries also exhibit significant employment gender gaps exacerbating the difficulty of finding skilled employees, which is ranked low in all countries except India.
It suggested that in economies such as Bangladesh efforts are needed to simultaneously improve the development as well as deployment of the nation’s human capital potential across the Learning and Employment dimensions for all age groups.
Finland, Norway and Switzerland hold the top three positions, utilising around 85% of their human capital.
On the global index, Japan and Sweden have moved up to 4th and 5th places and are followed by New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada and Belgium in top ten.
Source: Ittefaq
