Barbados Re-Enters Global Innovation Index

Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, has welcomed her country's inclusion in this year's Global Innovation Index (GII), eight years after it had been listed in the publication that ranks world economies according to their innovation capabilities.
'For the first time in eight years Barbados is included in this important index, which serves to identify the progress countries have made in creating a culture of innovation, highlights the levers that must be pulled to further transform, and allows us to measure what matters,' Mottley said in a video message to the unveiling of the 17th edition by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the Geneva-based international agency focused on global intellectual property issues.
Mottley said: 'As a small island developing state on the frontlines of the climate crisis, and incredibly sensitive to the impact of geopolitical and economic shocks, we in Barbados and the wider global majority are by our very nature innovative.'
Prime Minister Mottley said her government is committed to investing in its people, noting that 'we are committed to building the kind of education, business and investment ecosystem that will make the small size of our land space almost irrelevant. 'As we invest in our people, our potential for transformative growth becomes endless, [and] one of the most important areas of investment for Barbados has indeed, always been education,' she said.
Barbados ranked 77th among the 133 economies featured in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 024, with Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, ranked as the world's most innovative economies.
Barbados's ranking is considered impressive, given the gathering of the necessary statistical data, which began a few months ago. It was noted that Barbados performed above regional and Latin American countries (Jamaica – 79^th, Panama – 82^nd, the Dominican Republic – 97^th, and Trinidad and Tobago – 108^th) in the indicators of institutions, human capital and research, business sophistication, knowledge, and technology outputs.

(Sources: Trinidad Express Newspaper & NCBCM Research)