This ranking, which assesses the capacity of 64 economies for economic transformation of business, government and society through digital technologies, is led by the United States.

Hong Kong, Sweden, Denmark and Singapore are also part of the list of the top five.

"The Portuguese recovery results from a better performance compared to 2020 in two of the three areas that comprise the study: Knowledge (32nd) and Preparation for the Future (38th). In the third, which concerns Technology, Portugal maintained the position of the last two years (38th)", indicates the study published by the World Competitiveness Center of IMD.

The study states that Portugal is more competitive in terms of immigration laws (where it ranks third) and in terms of information technologies (11th) and the number of graduates in the field of science (12th). Weaknesses arise with regard to the training of workers (60th) and the number of mobile broadband users (59th) and wireless users (53rd).

In the list, at regional level, Portugal is behind Spain, which occupies the 31st position, but ahead of Italy, which appears in 40th and Greece (44th).

The United States leads the ranking for the fourth year in a row and countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have risen.

Despite the leadership of the United States and the dominance of Western European countries in the top 10, "the main trend highlighted by this year's edition of the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking is that the economies of East Asia continue their climb towards the top of the world. table", indicates the IMD.

"At the same time, in these four years, China has risen 15 places, following a state-based governance model," according to the document released.

According to the World Competitiveness Center at IMD, “the two largest economies in the world are equal in some measures of digital competitiveness that cover knowledge transfer, the level of business preparedness and investment in education. develop very different courses of digital transformation".

In the United States, the population "spends the most money on the Internet per capita, has one-third more Internet users per capita than China, and has the highest levels of tablet ownership in the world. It is also among the highest." high levels of online democratic interaction with the government (the so-called e-participation)", exemplifies the text.

By comparison, China leads the world in its proportion of scientific and technical workers, who represent 11% of the country's total employment, nearly double that of the United States (6%), he adds.