International Current Affairs October 2015 (Part 4)

Reports/lndices

India Up 16 Places to 55th on Global Competitiveness Index

• As on September 30, 2015 the World Economic Forum (WEF) said in its latest Global Competitiveness Report that India has moved up 16 positions to rank 55th on a global index of the world’s most competitive economies.
• The jump in India’s position underlines the country’s recent economic recovery, improvement in the competitiveness of the country’s institutions and its macroeconomic environment and a ‘slight improvement’ in infrastructure.
• Globally, Switzerland has retained its top position as the world’s most competitive economy for seventh year in a row and is followed by Singapore, the USA, Germany and the Netherlands in the top-five. These are followed by Japan, Hong Kong,. Finland, Sweden and the UK in the top-ten.

OECD International Migration Outlook 2015

• The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) International Migration Outlook 2015 was released on September 22, 2015. Immigration flows from India were comparatively low.
• One in ten new immigrants to developed countries in 2013 was from China. Germany is now second only to the United States in the number of migrants it receives. India made up only 4.4% of new migrants and was-in fourth position after Poland and Romania.
• The report says that immigration flows are on the rise in most OECD countries, and preliminary data for 2014 suggest that permanent migration flows increased sharply for the first time since 2007 and are back to their pre-financial crisis level, with 4.3 million permanent entries to the OECD.

Read Also – Smart Practice Current Affairs October 2015.

The State of Broadband Report 2015

• The United Nations (UN) Broadband Commission released the State of Broadband Report 2015 on September 21, 2015 at the United Nations Office in Geneva just ahead of the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals Summit at UN and the parallel meeting of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development on September 26, 2015.
• The report says that 57% of the world’s people remain offline and unable to take advantage of the enormous economic and social benefits the Internet can offer. India ranked 131 out of 189 countries on fixed-broadband subscriptions in 2014, a drop from the 125th rank a year before.
• On active mobile-broadband subscriptions, India ranked 155, a significant drop from the 113th rank in 2013. India ranked 136th in individuals using the Internet in 2014, with 18% individuals using the net, an improvement over the 142nd rank in 2013 when 15.1% individuals used the Internet.

Global Innovation Index 2015

• As on September 17, 2015, India’s ranking has slipped further to 81 in the list of Global Innovation Index, compared to 76 in 2014, on account of factors like consistently poor performance in ease of doing business, slow pace of policy decision-making and changing political environment.
• The study ranked 141 economies across the world on their innovation capacity and efficiency. It depicted that India has outperformed its peers in the Central and Southern Asian Region (CSA) and positioned itself as innovation achiever in the lower-middle income category.
• Switzerland, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and the US are the world’s five most innovative nations, according to the Global Innovation Index 2015, while China, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Jordan, Kenya, and Uganda are among a group of countries outperforming their economic peers.

India Made Debut in World University Rankings

• India has made its debut in the top 200 of the Quacquarelli Symonds’ (QS) World University 2015/16 rankings. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore has taken the top spot among Indian institutes, bagging the 147th rank while IIT-Delhi has come in at 179th place.
• Overall, there are 14 Indian institutes in the QS World University rankings. Another 5 institutes named IIT-Bombay (202), IIT-Madras (254), HT-Kanpur (271), IIT-Kharagpur (286), IIT-Roorkee (391) figure ,in the top 400. In the overall rankings, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) retains the top spot for the fourth year running. Harvard University moves up two places to rank second, followed by the University of Cambridge and Stanford University in joint third.

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