The Kingdom moved up three places in this year’s edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII), published by Cornell University’s business school and the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

Ranked in the 98th spot out of 126 countries analysed, Cambodia moved three notches from its position last year at 101 out of 127.

The study scores countries on factors related to innovation such as education, patent applications, technology adoption, industrial research collaboration, FDI inflows, knowledge-intensive employment, and many other aspects.

“Cambodia is relatively new in the global innovation landscape. Within the Asean group, [Cambodia] is second after Singapore in FDI inflows.

“It scores relatively well in the state of cluster development,” the report said, adding however that Cambodia still lags behind in many other indicators.

This year, Asean member countries were ranked within the top 100 of the GII. But Cambodia’s ranking was the lowest of any country in Asia. It must be noted that Laos and Myanmar were not included in the report.

Singapore tops Asean

Singapore had the highest score among Asean members in many of the selected indicators and ranked in the number five spot.

Malaysia moved up two positions from last year and now holds the 35th spot, while Thailand moved up seven positions to reach an overall ranking of 44.