Australia moves up in global competitiveness ranking: IMD

Australia has moved up one place in global competitiveness, but still lags behind on key economics measures, according to a key global ranking released on Tuesday.

China's Hong Kong topped the rankings in the 2016 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, followed closely by Switzerland and the U.S.

Australia's effective legal environment was listed as the nation's most attractive feature, followed by its high education levels and skilled workforce.

The nation improved its ranking by one place, ranked 17th out of 61 economies.

Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) chief executive Professor the Hon. Stephen Martin said in a statement on Tuesday that Australia moved up the ranking for the first time after five years of decline.

"The mining boom is over but the slack is being picked up by other sectors so while our economy is not going as fast as in the previous decade we are still growing," Martin said.

"Overall economic performance improved slightly on the back of gains in rankings for international investment, R&D and employment."

Professor Martin said Australia's rank on economic resilience jumped from 27 to 12, which indicated that the business community was more confident in Australia's ability to adapt to the changing economic environment following the end of the mining construction boom.

Martin noted Australia's information technology infrastructure was still an area of concern.

"Australia improved in the technological infrastructure category from 33 to 26 but this seems to be largely due to the increasing number of broadband subscribers," he said.

"Improving internet bandwidth speed still has a long way to go, with Australia dropping in the rankings from 26 to 39 which means despite the roll-out of the NBN, others are getting better quicker."

IMD's 2016 World Competitiveness Yearbook compares and ranks 61 economies based on more than 340 business competitiveness criteria. Endit