Malta has slipped one place in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index for 2015-2016.

The country is now ranked 48 out of 140 economies, compared to 47 the previous year. The new ranking follows a further slip of six places from 41 in 2013.

Among advanced economies, only four countries – Slovenia, Slovakia, Cyprus and Greece – rank lower than Malta in this year’s index.

The annual report, which will be released today, is an assessment of the factors driving productivity and prosperity across the world, including the strength of national institutions, infrastructure and macro-economic environment.

Malta was given an overall score of 4.4 on a scale of seven, compared to 5.8 for leaders Switzerland.

The country performed relat-ively strongly in the basic requirements category but very poorly in innovation and business sophistication factors, with a score of 3.9.

Globally, the report found “a failure to embrace long-term structural reforms that boost productivity and free up entrepreneurial talent”. This, it said, was harming the global economy’s ability to improve living standards, solve persistently-high unemployment and generate adequate resilience for future economic downturns.

The Global Competitiveness Index also found a close link between competitiveness and an economy’s ability to nurture, attract, leverage and support talent.

In many countries, the report noted, too few people had access to high-quality education and training, while labour markets were not flexible enough.

It said economic development was characterised by the “new normal” of higher unemployment, lower productivity growth and subdued economic growth.

However, it added that “new ways of consuming such as the sharing economy could lead to another wave of significant innov-ations that drive growth.”

The report also highlighted the most problematic factors for doing business. As in previous years, respondents identified inefficient government bureaucracy as the biggest obstacle in Malta.

Other major issues included access to financing, insufficient capacity to innovate, an inadequately-educated workforce and an inadequate supply of infrastructure.

A failure to embrace long-term structural reforms that boost productivity and free up entrepreneurial talent

The report singled out access to finance as a common threat to all European economies and the region’s “greatest impediment to unlocking investment”.

Nevertheless, Malta performs relatively strongly in financial market development metrics. The country is ranked in the top 20 for ease of access to loans and soundness of banks. It also ranked highly for availability and affordability of financial services.

Malta topped the rankings in terms of inflation, with an annual change of 0.8 per cent.

The country also features in the top 10 for imports and exports as a percentage of the GDP and for international internet bandwidth.

Underlining concerns about bureaucracy, however, Malta is among the lowest-ranked 20 countries for the number of procedures and the number of days required to start a business.

The capacity of Maltese businesses to innovate was ranked 73rd, a dramatic drop of 25 places compared to last year.

Meanwhile, the ratio of women to men in the labour force – 0.61 – remained stable compared to last year, with Malta ranked 116th.

In terms of infrastructure, the island performed well with respect to ports and air transport but once again scored poorly for road quality and the availability of airline seats.

Across Europe, the highest-ranked countries remained Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the UK.

Spain and Italy made significant strides thanks to reform packages aimed at improving the functioning of markets.

Similar improvements in the product and labour market in France and Portugal were outweighed by a weakening performance in other areas.

Greece remained in place at 81st in the rankings, based on data collected before the bailout in June.

Data relating to Malta were collected by Competitive Malta, a partner organisation of the World Economic Forum.