TBILISI, DFWatch–Georgia has worsened its performance on the Global Innovation Index by two points.

According to the Global Innovation Report 2013, Georgia has moved down two positions, compared to last year, to 73th place among 142 countries. In the South Caucasus region it now is listed between Armenia in 59th place and Azerbaijan in 105th place.

The Global Innovation Index is an annual publication which features, among other things, a composite indicator that ranks countries/economies in terms of their enabling environment to innovation and their innovation outputs.

The main criteria that were considered to determine each country’s index were: ‘Institutions’, ‘human capital and research’, ‘infrastructure’, ‘market sophistication’, ‘business sophistication’, ‘knowledge and technology outputs’ and ‘creative outputs’.

Georgia was grouped with 17 other countries, such as China, India, Armenia, Hungary, as the country with demonstrated rising level of innovation compared with its peers.

“Even if progress is not uniform, this is a result of tackling the formulation of a good policy-mix on all meaningful fronts: instructions, skills, infrastructures, integration to global markets and linkages with the business community,” the report says.

Switzerland retained its top spot in 2013.

GII has been published annually since 2007. In the first report, Georgia was in 93th place, in 2008-2009 years it moved down to 98th, in 2010 it took 84th place and since 2011 varies between 71st and 73rd place.

Global Innovation Index 2013 was published by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) – a leading global forum for the promotion of intellectual property.