Uzbekistan makes a comeback to the GII. After five years of not being included in the rankings because of a lack of data, it achieves the 93rd place this year.

As noted in the report, with improved data availability above the 66% indicator coverage per sub-index threshold, Uzbekistan is the single Central Asia economy to enter the GII this year. The country’s highest ranks are in the Innovation Input Sub-Index (81st), in pillars Human capital and research (77th), Infrastructure (72th), and Market sophistication (27th). Indicators that are in the GII top 10 and are relative strengths for Uzbekistan include Graduates in science & engineering (7th), Ease of starting a business (8th), and Gross capital formation (8th). Other relative strengths in the GII top 50 for Uzbekistan include indicators Expenditure on education (31st), Pupil-teacher ratio (38th), Government’s online service (48th), Ease of protecting minority investors (36th), Patents by origin (45th), productivity growth (12th), and Cultural & creative services exports (33rd).

India (48th) retains the highest rank in the region. The Islamic Republic of Iran (67th) ranks 2nd, and Kazakhstan (77th) ranks 3rd. Uzbekistan (93rd) enters the GII rankings as the 4th economy in this region, thanks to better data availability, and Kyrgyzstan (94th) remains 5th, although losing three spots.

The GII helps create an environment that evaluates innovation factors continuously. This year, it provides detailed innovation metrics for 131 economies. All economies covered represent 93.5% of the world’s population and 97.4% of the world’s GDP.

Source: UzA