Mumbai: India ranks a poor 41, lagging behind 40 other countries, including Thailand, Malta and Malaysia, in industrial competitiveness, a report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) said.

The UNIDO competitiveness ranking, based on an industrial development scoreboard, ranks India 41 in a list of 100 economies in terms of competitiveness.

Singapore tops the list and is followed by Ireland, Switzerland, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Korea, Taiwan Province of China, France, the US, Hong Kong, Austria, Slovenia in the top 15.

India, however, fared better compared to its neighbours - Pakistan ranking 55, Bangladesh at 67 and Sri Lanka occupying the 75th position.

Others in the ranking are UK (16), the Netherlands (17), Malaysia (18), Canada (22), Malta (23), China (26), Mexico (30), Brazil (39) and Russia (66).

''The scoreboard is based on two sets of components, namely industrial development indicators and competitive industrial performance index, the latter benchmarking competitive industrial activity of countries against the backdrop of liberalisation and globalisation,'' UNIDO said.

The index measures the competitive performance of countries in terms of their ability to produce goods competitively, keeping abreast with changing technologies as well as the intensity of industrialisation, which is the share of manufacturing value added in GDP.

It also takes into account export quality, reflecting the role of manufacturing in a country's export activity as well as the ability to make more advanced products, thereby moving into more dynamic areas of export growth, UNIDO said.