Bangladesh moves up 14 notches in GII

Bangladesh has advanced 14 spots in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2022 in a major stride to rank 102nd in the globe. Among 132 economies reported, the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) placed the country at 102nd in 2022, 14 steps up from 116th in 2021.

Although Bangladesh’s overall score was 19.7 compared to top-ranked Switzerland’s 64.6, its performance was in line with the level of the country’s development. Despite such substantial progress, Bangladesh scored zero in the areas of patents and utility models and intellectual property.

The index uses various indicators to rank innovation. They include measures on political environment, education, and infrastructure and knowledge creation. Bangladesh has performed relatively well in the creative output category, advancing to 87th place from 123rd a year earlier, driven by its solid progress in industrial design, global brand value, and mobile app creation.

And among other countries in South Asia, India has ranked 40th, Sri Lanka 85th, Pakistan 87th, Nepal 111th and Myanmar 116th in the innovation index.

In the business sophistication category, the country fell three spots to 125th as Bangladesh performed poorly in the FDI net inflow, intellectual property payments, and university and industry research and development collaboration.

Apart from Bangladesh, Myanmar (116th) and Ethiopia (117th) have made most progress in the rankings, rising between nine and 14 positions overall, the report said, adding that Sri Lanka, Pakistan (87th) and Bangladesh jumped up the ranking notably this year.

In relation to 2021, 27 economies switched performance groups in 2022 while four economies namely Sri Lanka (85th), Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Yemen (128th) raised their performance status from below expectation to matching expectation.

According to the 15th edition of the GII, Bangladesh’s improvement came on the back of solid performance in online creativity and corporate intangible asset intensity. Bangladesh was ranked 78th by scoring 22.9 in Knowledge Impact Index while Bangladesh fifth in terms of labor productivity.

Apart from this, Bangladesh ranked 122th in terms of new business, 75th in terms of software usage, 117th in terms of ISO 9001 quality certificate and 97th in terms of high-tech manufacturing.

Bangladesh ranked 110th with 8.2 points in terms of knowledge dissemination while the score for intellectual property was zero and Bangladesh ranked 94th in the list.

Besides, the position of Bangladesh is 100th in terms of production and export complexity, 104th in terms of hi-tech export and 88th in terms of ICT service export.