Sri Lanka ranks 50th in Human Capital Index, bright spot for South Asia region

Sri Lanka was ranked at 50th position globally on the Human Capital Index, which quantifies how 130 countries are developing and deploying their human capital, and tracks progress over time.

The index, released by Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) at the Annual Meeting of New Champions – also known as ‘Summer Davos’ summit in China’s Tianjin city – seeks to serve as a tool for capturing the complexity of education, employment and workforce dynamics so that various stakeholders are able to make better-informed decisions.

The report says Sri Lanka, with an overall score of 71.69 is the bright spot for the South Asia region. The country benefits from strong educational enrolment and basic education completion rates as well as positive perceptions of the quality of its primary schools and education system overall (23rd on both).

However, it underperforms when it comes to translating the potential of its young population to the workforce, with one in four young people not active in employment, education or training.

Factors considered for the ranking include 46 indicators, using both publicly available data and a limited set of qualitative survey data from the WEF’s Executive Opinion Survey.

This year’s Human Capital Report aims to combine public international statistics, qualitative perception data and big data metrics to provide a comprehensive picture of the situation today as well as the opportunities for the future.

The Index covers six countries from the South Asia region: Sri Lanka (50), Bhutan (91), Bangladesh (104), India (105), Nepal (108) and Pakistan (118).

Holding the top five spots were Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Japan and New Zealand, in that order all being able to engage over 82% of their human capital throughout the working years. At the bottom in the index are Mali, Nigeria, Chad, Yemen and Mauritania.