Johannesburg - South Africa has fallen nine places in the latest global competitiveness rankings - from 45th place last year to 54th this year - but remains the highest ranked country in sub-Saharan Africa.
The World Economic Forum, in its Global Competitiveness Report for 2010 and 2011, said that while the country has dropped somewhat in rank since last year, its performance has remained stable and that the decline reflected improvements in other countries.
Switzerland tops the overall rankings, while the US falls two places to fourth position, overtaken by Sweden (2nd) and Singapore (3rd), after already ceding the top place to Switzerland last year.
"In addition to the macroeconomic imbalances that have been building up over time, there has been a weakening of United States' public and private institutions, as well as lingering concerns about the state of its financial markets," the World Economic Forum said in the report.
Nordic countries continue to be well positioned in the ranking, with Sweden, Finland (7th) and Denmark (9th) among the top 10, and with Norway at 14th.
Sweden overtook the US and Singapore this year to be placed 2nd overall. The UK, after falling in the rankings over recent years, moved back up by one place to 12th position.
Several countries from the Middle East and North Africa region occupy the upper half of the rankings, led by Qatar (17th), Saudi Arabia (21st), Israel (24th), United Arab Emirates (25th), Tunisia (32nd), Kuwait (35th) and Bahrain (37th), with most Gulf States continuing their upward trend of recent years.
In sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa (54th) and Mauritius (55th) featured in the top half of the rankings, followed by second-tier best regional performers Namibia (74th), Botswana (76th) and Rwanda (80th).
Questions over sustainabilityThe report said that Africa has experienced impressive growth over the past decade, and has weathered the recent global economic turmoil relatively well.
Indeed, coming out of the crisis, the International Monetary Fund predicts gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 4.7% in 2010 and well above 5% for the next few years for sub-Saharan Africa.
"Yet an assessment of the competitiveness of African economies raises questions about how sustainable this growth will be over the longer term and highlights areas in need of urgent attention to allow Africa to achieve its full economic potential," the report states.
"However, despite such concerns, some African countries continue to fare quite well. South Africa and Mauritius remain in the top half of the rankings, and there have been measurable improvements across specific areas in a number of other African countries."
"On the other hand, there have been some significant declines registered in countries that were previously making strides ahead. More generally, sub-Saharan Africa as a whole lags behind the rest of the world in competitiveness, requiring efforts across many areas to place the region on a firmly sustainable growth and development path going forward," the report said.