This article published in Business World (January 23, 2018) entitled, “2018 Inclusive Development Index (IDI)” scores and ranking of selected economies. The IDI is an annual assessment of countries’ economic performance that measures how they perform on eleven (11) dimensions of economic progress in addition to GDP, namely: per capita GDP, labor productivity, health life expectancy, percent employment, net income, poverty rate, wealth, median income, net savings, carbon intensity, public debt, and dependency ratio. The IDI scores are then scaled from 1 – 7 with 1 as worst and 7 as best based on their performance on said indicators.

The Philippines got a score of 3.83 and ranked 38th out of the 74 emerging economies category, close to Indonesia with a score of 3.95 in 36th place. Other emerging economies are Malaysia with a score of 4.30 and ranked in 13th place, Thailand with 4.24 at 17th place, and Vietnam with a score of 3.98 at 33rd place.

The key performance indicators of the Philippines in the eleven dimensions are shown in the attached infographic which also show the trend (percentage change between 2012 and 2016) categories as: receding, slowly receding, stable, slowly advancing and advancing. The Philippines’ trend is shown as advancing to slowly advancing in the following indicators: employment, public debt and adjusted net savings; stable in the following indicators: in GDP per capita, labor productivity and carbon intensity but receding to lowly receding in the following: net income, wealth, health life expectancy, median income and poverty rate. The top 10 in the advanced economies category are also shown in the attached infographic. (Source: The Inclusive Development Index, WEF; BusinessWorld graphics)