Sometimes, we don’t truly appreciate what we have in our country until we experience something worse elsewhere.
Case in point, while many Malaysians complain about the quality of our nation’s roads, a UK tourist personally found it to be the opposite, instead praising the roads in Malaysia as “well-designed” and pleasant to drive on.
Malaysia has the 9th best road quality in Asia
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Well, beyond the tourist’s personal views, did you know that Malaysia’s roads have been ranked among the best in Asia?
9th best to be exact, if a study by The Global Economy is to be believed.
Sourcing data from the World Economic Forum (WEF), the study found that Malaysia’s roads quality has an aggregated score of 5.3, making it the 21st best out of the 144 nations and autonomous regions in the ranking.
Regionally, that puts the quality of Malaysia’s roads as 9th best in Asia and 2nd in Southeast Asia.
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Globally, the country with the best road quality is Singapore with an aggregated score of 6.5, followed by Netherlands in 2nd place and Switzerland in 3rd.
Making up the top 10 are Hong Kong, Japan, Austria, Portugal, UAE, South Korea and Oman, respectively.
Only Singapore has better road quality than Malaysia in Southeast Asia
In Southeast Asia, Singapore is 1st followed by Malaysia (21st globally), Brunei (30th globally), Thailand (56th globally), Indonesia (59th globally), Laos (86th globally), Philippines (87th globally) and Vietnam (104th globally).
Do note that Myanmar and Timor-Leste were not part of the study as there are no data for both nations.
How the study was conducted and why it should be taken with a grain of salt
According to The Global Economy, the road quality indicator is one of the components of WEF’s annual Global Competitiveness Index.
The indicator represents an assessment of the quality of roads in a given country based on data from the WEF Executive Opinion Survey, a long-running and extensive survey tapping the opinions of over 14,000 business leaders in 144 countries.
The road quality indicator score is based on only 1 question, in which respondents are asked to rate the roads in their country on a scale from 1 (underdeveloped) to 7 (extensive and efficient by international standards).
The individual responses are aggregated to produce a country score.
However, do take the study with a grain of salt as the latest data on the road quality indicator is only from 2006 to 2019, as no similar study of this scale has been in the past 5 years.
Nevertheless, Malaysia’s placement in the ranking is definitely something to be proud of, though as with everything else in life, there’s always room for improvement!
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So, what do you guys think of the study? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!
Also read: Study: Malaysia Ranks 14th Among the Most Visited Countries Worldwide!
