Bangladesh has failed to improve its ranking in the Global Connectedness Index (GCI) as it showed no change in connectivity with other countries for the past two years, remaining at 140th among 169 countries, scoring 34 out of 100.
DHL, a German logistics company released the “Global Connectedness Index-2018” report on Tuesday based on trade, and flow of capital, information, and people.
According to the report, Bangladesh also moved down six notches compared to the rank of 2015, when it was at 134th position. But in 2016 and 2017, the ranking of connectedness stood at 140.
The country's score also went down by a point from 35 in 2015, caused by the downtrend in investment. However in terms of overall investment, Bangladesh's ranking has gone up by one notch.
Speaking about the index, John Pearson, CEO of DHL Express explained: "Even as the world continues to globalize, there still remains tremendous untapped potential. The GCI shows that, currently, most of the movements and exchanges we are seeing are domestic rather than international, yet we know that globalization is a decisive factor in growth and prosperity"
Pearson added that increasing international cooperation "continues to contribute to stability", hence companies and countries that "embrace globalization benefit tremendously".
The GCI report states that countries that integrate more deeply into international flows tend to enjoy faster economic growth, and even the top-ranked countries have untapped opportunities to strengthen their global connectedness.
“Strong economic growth boosted international flows while key policy changes such as US tariff increases had not yet been implemented,” the report reads.
Emerging economies have much lower average levels of connectedness than advanced economies. The largest gap is found in information flows, into which advanced economies are nine times as deeply integrated.
As per the findings of the report, the world’s level of connectedness reached a new record high in 2017.
"For the first time since 2007, the shares of trade, capital, information, and people flows crossing national borders all increased significantly," reads the report.
The Netherlands has been ranked as the world’s most globally connected country, while Singapore leads on the size of its international flows relative to domestic activity. The United Kingdom has the most global distribution of flows around the world.
Europe has been the world’s most globally connected region, with eight of the 10 most connected countries situated in the continent. As a region, Europe also leads in trade and people flows, while North America is the top region for information and capital flows.
