Switzerland tops the overall ranking in The Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010, released by the World Economic Forum ahead of its Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2009 in Dalian.



The United States falls one place to second position, with weakening in its financial markets and macroeconomic stability. Singapore, Sweden and Denmark round out the top five.



European economies continue to prevail in the top 10 with Finland, Germany and the Netherlands following suit. The United Kingdom, while remaining very competitive, has continued its fall from last year, moving down one more place this year to 13th, mainly attributable to continuing weakening of its financial markets.



The People’s Republic of China continues to lead the way among large developing economies, improving by one place this year, solidifying its position among the top 30. Among the three other large BRIC economies, Brazil and India also improve, while Russia falls by 12 places. Several Asian economies perform strongly with Japan, Hong Kong SAR, Republic of Korea and Taiwan, China also in the top 20. In Latin America, Chile is the highest ranked country, followed by Costa Rica and Brazil.



Israel fell to 27th place from 23rd place last year and from 14th place three years ago.



Qatar leads the rankings from the Middle East, followed by United Arab Emirates, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. The Gulf States in particular continued their upward trend of recent years.



Israel scored 4.80 points this year. Israel scored particularly poorly in health and elementary education, falling to 39th place, and in macroeconomic stability, falling to 67th place. It was ranked 39th in institutions and 44th in infrastructure.



It appears that reductions in overall government spending have affected the educational system, as reflected in the falling public education expenditure as a share of gross national income. The deteriorating quality of education in Israel is worrisome because the availability of a well-educated workforce, such as engineers and scientists, provided the basis of the successful technology-focused development strategy followed by the country over the last three decades.