Damianou comments on Cyprus ranking 27th among 133 countries in the Global Innovation Index for 2024

"As a Government, we focus on strengthening the production of knowledge and above all on its transformation into innovative products and services with benefit and value for the citizen,” Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, Dr Nicodemos Damianou has said.

He was commenting on Cyprus being ranked 27th out of 133 countries worldwide in the Global Innovation Index (GII) for 2024, moving up a rank compared to 2023 in the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) annual report.

Damianou elaborated, “By supporting innovation and start-up entrepreneurship, we create new sources of sustainable growth for the economy,” Damianou continued, “We carefully study the results of European and international indicators, stay close to the ecosystem, listen to its needs, and introduce measures and policies that effectively strengthen the capacities of the various actors and create an environment more and more favorable for the development of innovation."

The Global Innovation Index (GII) ranks world economies according to their innovation capabilities. Consisting of roughly 80 indicators, grouped into innovation inputs and outputs, the GII aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation and Damianou’s quote was included in a Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy announcement on the report.

The announcementalso noted that the GII index assesses the performance and impact of innovation in the following seven key dimensions, and based on 80 sub-indicators: Institutions, Human Capital and Research Capital and Research, Infrastructure, Market sophistication, Business sophistication, Knowledge and technology outputs and Creative outputs.

With the 27th place overall, Cyprus also ranked 26th among the 51 high-income economies and remains among the top three of 18 countries in the region of North Africa and West Asia, in second place, right after Israel.

The report said that Cyprus produces significant innovation outputs, in relation to conditions and investment in the sector, put the country in 17th place in the relevant ranking, marking a significant improvement compared to the previous year. “This fact demonstrates that investments in innovation in our country are successfully translated into tangible results with a strong socio -economic impact,” the Deputy Ministry’s announcement said.

Cyprus also records high performance in individual indicators, such as the export of ICT services, the production of scientific articles, venture investments capitals (VCs), as well as the employment of women with higher education degrees.

“At the same time, the dimensions "Complexity of the market", where Cyprus is 41st, "Infrastructure" (45th) and "Human Capital and Research" (46th) are recorded as areas in need of improvement,” the Deputy Ministry’s announcement underlined, elaborating, “In particular, significant room for improvement is recognised in terms of foreign investment inflows, the introduction of high technology, the size of the domestic market, the number of graduates in the fields of science and engineering, as well as the need to further strengthen funding for startups and scaleups . - and the wider investment in research and development.”

The report’s section on Cyprus can be viewed here.