Singapore tops global IT readiness report

Want China Times, Lin Kuo-pin and Staff Reporter 2015-04-19

Visitors at Taipei Computex, June 2, 2014. Taiwan ranked No. 18 in this
year's report. (Photo/Wang Ying-hao)

Taiwan ranked 18th in the networked readiness index (NRI) of the Global Information Technology Report 2015, which was released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on April 15, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Commercial Times. Singapore claimed the first place,

The NRI measures economies in terms of their capacity to prepare for, use and leverage information and communications technologies. In the 143 economies surveyed this year, Singapore moved up from No. 2 last year to overtake Finland as the world's most network-ready country.

Finland dropped to second after topping the ranking for two years in a row. Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the US were ranked third to seventh. The UK moved up one place to be No. 8 and Luxembourg moved up two places to No. 9. Japan advanced six places from last year to No. 10, only the second Asian country in the top ten.

Russia climbed nine places to 41 while China remained the same at No. 62. South Africa was ranked 75, Brazil 84 and India 89.

Taiwan was ranked 18, the lowest position since it was first evaluated in 2002. Taiwan's highest ranking was No. 6 in 2011 and No. 7 in 2006.