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SINGAPORE – Despite the coronavirus pandemic and the disruption in trade and capital flows and the economic recession it caused this year, Singapore has been ranked as the second most connected country in the world.
It ranked first for the size of its international flows of goods, capital, information and people relative to its national economy in the 2020 edition of DHL’s Global Connectivity Index (GCI).
But Singapore lost first place in the GCI overall standings to the Netherlands, who scored a total of 91 points, by just two points. Both countries maintained their positions on the list from the previous edition.
The GCI, compiled every alternate year by Deutsche Post DHL Group in collaboration with the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, is a detailed analysis based on more than 3.5 million data points that tracks the globalization of 169 countries.
The other top 10 positions in the general classification were occupied by Belgium, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Malta.
The GCI also has two separate classifications that measure the global connectivity of each country based on the size of its international flows relative to the size of its national economy, known as “depth,” and the extent to which the flows are spread. distributed globally, or “breadth”.
The leaders in depth (economies with the highest proportions of flows that cross national borders) are Singapore, Hong Kong, Belgium, the Netherlands and Estonia.
The champions of amplitude, countries with the most global flow patterns, are the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, Israel and South Korea.
Referring to the coronavirus pandemic that swept the world this year and increased the distance between nations, companies and individuals, the 2020 GCI report was titled “The State of Globalization in a Distant World.”
Steven A. Altman, principal investigator at NYU Stern and director of the DHL Initiative on Globalization, said that while social distancing has been essential to public health, the pandemic exacerbated geopolitical and social failures, compounding the challenges of controlling the spread. from Covid-19 and keep economies running.
Globalization did not collapse in 2020, but the pandemic transformed, at least temporarily, the way countries connect, he said. So as travel plummeted, digital flows increased. International trade and investment were hit hard at the beginning of the pandemic and then began to recover, he noted.
“My hope is that the Covid-19 jolt towards globalization, with due thought, will focus minds on how to strengthen our connections to promote a healthier, more prosperous and resilient future,” said Altman, who is also one of the authors. of the GCI report.
According to the report, the global level of global connection is projected to decline in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it is unlikely to fall below the levels seen during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.
International trade recovered strongly after a sharp decline at the start of the pandemic. Still, the share of global production that crosses national borders will decline modestly in 2020.
Flows of people suffered an unprecedented decline this year as nations closed borders to slow the spread of the virus. International travel is on track to regress to its 1990 level.
As the debate over the future of globalization continues, global flow data and forecasts reaffirm that the world is, and will continue to be, only partially globalized, according to the report.
All signs point to a future in which international flows will remain so large that decision makers will ignore them at their own risk, even as borders and differences between countries continue to make domestic activity the default. in most areas.
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