Despite the obvious improvement that has taken place, Indonesia is still considered among the least competitive countries in the Asian region. Indonesian competitiveness continues to languish behind Singapore (ranked 5th), Japan (7th), Malaysia (26th), Thailand (35th) and India (43rd).
Meanwhile, based on an International Institute for Management Development (IMD) report in the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2007, Indonesian competitiveness was ranked among the two lowest countries surveyed, namely Indonesia ranked 54th, whereas Venezuela ranked 55th out of the 55 countries sampled. As appears to be common knowledge, increasing economic globalization has made competition amongst countries even tighter.