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India continues to remain ranked 43rd on an annual World Competitiveness Index compiled by Institute for Management Development (IMD) with some traditional weaknesses like poor infrastructure and insufficient education investment keeping its ranking low, the international business school said on Tuesday.

Singapore has retained its top position on the 63-nation list.

Denmark has moved up to the second position (from 8th last year), Switzerland has gained one place to rank 3rd, the Netherlands has retained its 4th place and Hong Kong has slipped to the fifth place (from 2nd in 2019).

The US has moved down to 10th place (from 3rd last year), while China has also slipped from 14th to 20th place. Among the BRICS nations, India is ranked second after China, followed by Russia (50th), Brazil (56th) and South Africa (59th).

India was ranked 41st on the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking, being produced by the business school based in Switzerland and Singapore every year since 1989, but had slipped to 45th in 2017 before improving to 44th in 2018 and then to 43rd in 2019.

While its overall position has remained unchanged in the 2020 list, it has recorded improvements in areas like long-term employment growth, current account balance, high-tech exports, foreign currency reserves, public expenditure on education, political stability and overall productivity, the IMD said.

However, it has moved down in areas like exchange rate stability, real GDP growth, competition legislation and taxes.

Arturo Bris, Head of Competitiveness Center at IMD Business School, said India continues to struggle on the list and the recent country rating downgrade by Moody’s reflects the uncertainties regarding the economy’s future.

"In our ranking this year, we again emphasize the traditional weaknesses of India -- poor infrastructure, an important deficit in education investment, and a health system that does not reach everybody. For India to follow the path of China, it must stress its intangible infrastructure," Bris said.

"In a less global world, with China, USA, and Europe looking inwards, currencies like the rupee (and the Brazilian real for instance) are going to suffer and display high volatilities.

"Moody’s has threatened the country with a downgrade to junk and that would put India in a terrible position to attract foreign capital. So the urgency for the government should be to fix the short-term problems—and this requires to improve the credibility of the government itself," Bris added.

With the exception of Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and the Korean Republic, most Asian economies dropped in rankings this year, the IMD said.

The reason for the Asian economies’ less stellar performance as a region, this year is partly the result of the trade frictions between China and the US, particularly because these economies are highly dependent on trade with China.

About Singapore, which moved to the top rank last year, the IMD said its position is largely driven by the relative ease of setting up business, availability of skilled labour and its cutting-edge technological infrastructure.

The IMD said the impact of COVID-19 on the competitiveness ranking has partially been captured by executives’ opinions about the effectiveness of the different health systems.

In the ASEAN countries included in the survey, only Singapore and Thailand have a positive performance in the effectiveness of the health infrastructure.

Washington, May 30: The United States will end its relationship with the World Health Organization over the body’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday, accusing the U.N. agency of becoming a puppet of China.

The move to quit the Geneva-based body, which the United States formally joined in 1948, comes amid growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over the coronavirus outbreak. The virus first emerged in China’s Wuhan city late last year.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said Chinese officials “ignored their reporting obligations” to the WHO about the virus - that has killed hundreds of thousands of people globally - and pressured the agency to “mislead the world.”

“China has total control over the World Health Organization despite only paying $40 million per year compared to what the United States has been paying which is approximately $450 million a year,” he said.

Trump’s decision follows a pledge last week by Chinese President Xi Jinping to give $2 billion to the WHO over the next two years to help combat the coronavirus. The amount almost matches the WHO’s entire annual program budget for last year.

Trump last month halted funding for the 194-member organization, then in a May 18 letter gave the WHO 30 days to commit to reforms.

“Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” Trump said on Friday.

It was not immediately clear when his decision would come into effect. A 1948 joint resolution of Congress on U.S. membership of the WHO said the country “reserves its right to withdraw from the organization on a one-year notice.”

The World Health Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s announcement. It has previously denied Trump’s assertions that it promoted Chinese “disinformation” about the virus.

“It’s important to remember that the WHO is a platform for cooperation among countries,” said Donna McKay, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights. “Walking away from this critical institution in the midst of an historic pandemic will hurt people both in the United States and around the world.”

‘ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL’

The United States currently owes the WHO more than $200 million in assessed contributions, according to the WHO website. Washington also gives several hundred million dollars annually in voluntary funding tied to specific WHO programs such as polio eradication, HIV, hepatitis and tuberculosis.

Amesh A. Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said that in practice Trump’s decision was unlikely to change the operations of the WHO.

“From a symbolic or moral standpoint it’s the wrong type of action to be taking in the middle of a pandemic and seems to deflect responsibility for what we in the U.S. failed to do and blame the WHO,” said Adalja.

When Trump halted funding to the WHO last month, two Western diplomats said the U.S. suspension was more harmful politically to the WHO than to the agency’s current programs, which are funded for now.

The WHO is an independent international body that works with the United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last month that the WHO is “absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against COVID-19.”

When asked about Trump’s decision, a U.N. spokesman said: “We have consistently called for all states to support WHO.”

Trump has long scorned multilateralism as he focuses on an “America First” agenda. Since taking office, he has quit the U.N. Human Rights Council, the U.N. cultural agency, a global accord to tackle climate change and the Iran nuclear deal. He has also cut funding for the U.N. population fund and the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees.

“The WHO is the world’s early warning system for infectious diseases,” said U.S. Representative Nita Lowey, a Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Appropriations. “Now, during a global pandemic that has cost over 100,000 American lives, is not the time to put the country further at risk.”

Moscow, Jul 2: Russian voters approved changes to the constitution that will allow President Vladimir Putin to hold power until 2036, but the weeklong plebiscite that concluded Wednesday was tarnished by widespread reports of pressure on voters and other irregularities.

With most of the nation's polls closed and 20% of precincts counted, 72% voted for the constitutional amendments, according to election officials.

For the first time in Russia, polls were kept open for a week to bolster turnout without increasing crowds casting ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic a provision that Kremlin critics denounced as an extra tool to manipulate the outcome.

A massive propaganda campaign and the opposition's failure to mount a coordinated challenge helped Putin get the result he wanted, but the plebiscite could end up eroding his position because of the unconventional methods used to boost participation and the dubious legal basis for the balloting.

By the time polls closed in Moscow and most other parts of Western Russia, the overall turnout was at 65%, according to election officials. In some regions, almost 90% of eligible voters cast ballots.

On Russia's easternmost Chukchi Peninsula, nine hours ahead of Moscow, officials quickly announced full preliminary results showing 80% of voters supported the amendments, and in other parts of the Far East, they said over 70% of voters backed the changes.

Kremlin critics and independent election observers questioned the turnout figures.

We look at neighboring regions, and anomalies are obvious there are regions where the turnout is artificially (boosted), there are regions where it is more or less real, Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the independent election monitoring group Golos, told The Associated Press.

Putin voted at a Moscow polling station, dutifully showing his passport to the election worker. His face was uncovered, unlike most of the other voters who were offered free masks at the entrance.

The vote completes a convoluted saga that began in January, when Putin first proposed the constitutional changes.

He offered to broaden the powers of parliament and redistribute authority among the branches of government, stoking speculation he might seek to become parliamentary speaker or chairman of the State Council when his presidential term ends in 2024.

His intentions became clear only hours before a vote in parliament, when legislator Valentina Tereshkova, a Soviet-era cosmonaut who was the first woman in space in 1963, proposed letting him run two more times.

The amendments, which also emphasize the primacy of Russian law over international norms, outlaw same-sex marriages and mention a belief in God as a core value, were quickly passed by the Kremlin-controlled legislature.

Putin, who has been in power for more than two decades longer than any other Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin said he would decide later whether to run again in 2024.

He argued that resetting the term count was necessary to keep his lieutenants focused on their work instead of darting their eyes in search for possible successors.

Analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin political consultant, said Putin's push to hold the vote despite the fact that Russia has thousands of new coronavirus infections each day reflected his potential vulnerabilities.

Putin lacks confidence in his inner circle and he's worried about the future, Pavlovsky said.

He wants an irrefutable proof of public support.

Even though the parliament's approval was enough to make it law, the 67-year-old Russian president put his constitutional plan to voters to showcase his broad support and add a democratic veneer to the changes.

But then the coronavirus pandemic engulfed Russia, forcing him to postpone the April 22 plebiscite.

The delay made Putin's campaign blitz lose momentum and left his constitutional reform plan hanging as the damage from the virus mounted and public discontent grew.

Plummeting incomes and rising unemployment during the outbreak have dented his approval ratings, which sank to 59%, the lowest level since he came to power, according to the Levada Center, Russia's top independent pollster.

Moscow-based political analyst Ekaterina Schulmann said the Kremlin had faced a difficult dilemma: Holding the vote sooner would have brought accusations of jeopardizing public health for political ends, while delaying it raised the risks of defeat.

Holding it in the autumn would have been too risky, she said.

In Moscow, several activists briefly lay on Red Square, forming the number 2036 with their bodies in protest before police stopped them.

Some others in Moscow and St. Petersburg staged one-person pickets and police didn't intervene.

Several hundred opposition supporters rallied in central Moscow to protest the changes, defying a ban on public gatherings imposed for the coronavirus outbreak. Police didn't intervene and even handed masks to the participants.

Authorities mounted a sweeping effort to persuade teachers, doctors, workers at public sector enterprises and others who are paid by the state to cast ballots. Reports surfaced from across the vast country of managers coercing people to vote.

The Kremlin has used other tactics to boost turnout and support for the amendments.