A number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, including Qatar and the UAE, have shown improvement in a key global competitiveness index and are in the upper half of the rankings.

Switzerland knocked the United States off the position as the world's most competitive economy as the crash of the US banking system left it more exposed to some long-standing weaknesses, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2009/2010.

The report showed economies with a large focus on financial services such as the US, Britain or Iceland were the losers of the crisis.

The US as the world's largest economy lost last year's strong lead, slipping to number two for the first time since the introduction of the index in its current form in 2004.

Among the top-ten, Singapore moved up to third from fifth, swapping positions with Denmark, which fell behind fellow-Nordic country Sweden. Finland as 6th and Germany as 7th stayed put while Japan and Canada overtook the Netherlands.

Qatar led the Middle East region by improving its position to 22nd on the list from 26th last year, while UAE jumped up to 23rd from 31. Both Saudi Arabia (28) and Bahrain (38) dropped one place from 27 and 37, while Oman (41) dropped from 38rd place. Kuwait dropped to 39th position from 35th last year. 

The rankings of some other Arab countries are as follows (last year's ranking in bracket): Tunisia 40 (36);  Jordan 50 (48); Egypt 70 (81); Morocco 73 (73); Algeria 83 (99); Libya 88 (91)  and Syria 94 (78).

The WEF bases its assessment on a range of factors, key for any country to prosper. The index includes economic data such as growth but also health data or the number of internet users.

The study also factors in a survey among business leaders, assessing for example the government's efficiency or the flexibility of the labour market.

The WEF applauded Switzerland for its capacity to innovate, sophisticated business culture, effective public services, excellent infrastructure and well-functioning goods markets.

The Swiss economy dipped into recession last year, too and had to bail out its largest bank UBS. But its economy is holding up better than many peers and most banks are relatively unscathed by the crisis, which drove US banks into bankruptcy.

The WEF said the US economy was still extremely productive but a number of escalating weaknesses were taking its toll.

Concerns were growing about the government's ability to maintain distance to the private sector and doubts rose about the quality of firms' auditing and reporting standards, it said.

Leading emerging markets Brazil, India and China improved their competitiveness despite the crisis, the report showed.

But Russia saw one of the steepest declines among the 133 countries assessed, falling back 12 places to 63, as worries about government efficiency and judicial independence rose, the WEF said.

After years of rapid improvement, which took it to place 29, China now had to tackle shortcomings in areas such as financial markets, technological readiness and education as it could no longer rely on cheap labour alone to generate growth.

India, ranked 49th, was in turn well positioned in complex fields such as innovation but had still to catch up on basics such as health or infrastructure, the WEF said.

Brazil leapt by 8 ranks to 56th, as measures to improve fiscal sustainability and to liberalise and open the economy showed effects, the report said.

In sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa, Mauritius and Botswana feature in the top half of the rankings, with a number of other countries from the region measurably improving their competitiveness.

The WEF study named African countries Zimbabwe and Burundi as the world's least competitive economies.  In the case of Zimbabwe, the<