Food security report examines Asia & Pacific region

A report from The Economist Intelligence Unit
Food securityinfocus:
Asia & Pacific2014
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© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20141
Food security in focus: Asia & Pacific 2014
Food security in focus: Asia & Pacific 2014 is an
Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report
commissioned by DuPont. The report discusses the
major findings in the 2014 Global Food Security
Index (GFSI) for the 22 countries of Asia & Pacific
included in the index.
About the GFSI
The GFSI considers the core issues of affordability,
availability, and quality & safety across a set of 109
countries. The index is a dynamic quantitative and
qualitative benchmarking model, constructed from
28 unique indicators, that measures the drivers of
food security across both developed and
developing countries. Food security is defined as
the state in which people at all times have physical,
social and economic access to sufficient and
nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for a
healthy and active life, based on the definition
established at the 1996 World Food Summit. The
overall goal of the study is to assess the
vulnerability of food systems to security and
insecurity by looking at drivers of the Affordability,
Availability, and Quality & Safety of food. The 2014
GFSI is the third annual index in this series.
Acknowledgements
Lucy Hurst, associate director of custom research
for the Americas, was the project director. Joshua
Grundleger, analyst, was the project manager.
Katherine Stewart, research associate, was the
editor of the Food security in focus series. Martin
Vieiro, analyst, provided research and analytical
support. Leo Abruzzese, global forecasting director
and global director of public policy, served as
senior adviser. William Shallcross designed and
constructed the benchmarking model, and Mike
Kenny was responsible for layout and design.
Duncan Innes-Ker, regional editor, Asia, provided
regional expertise.
PrefaceContents
A regional
analysis of food
security 2
Regional
results and
comparisons 3
Food security in
Asia & Pacific 6
The countries
of Asia & Pacific 10
Appendix 13

The Food security in focus regional reports identify
both similarities and differences between countries
in each region and highlight regional areas of
strength and weakness, providing regional analysis
and context to the results in the 2014 GFSI.
Food security is a complex and nuanced issue,
which can be analysed through many viewpoints
and from many geographical perspectives—
national, regional and global. To facilitate greater
insight into the primary elements of global food
security, and to develop a common standard
against which all countries and regions can be
measured, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)
created the Global Food Security Index (GFSI). The
index is a tool to be used by a wide range of
organisations and individuals working to address
food security and the smooth functioning of food
systems at a variety of levels. Some of the major
elements of food security and, in particular, the
deficiencies that may lead to greater food
insecurity, differ across the globe. The regional
reports seek to facilitate a deeper analysis of food
security through a unique lens. Specifically, these
reports seek to:
l Examine regional challenges, strengths and
issues surrounding food security to gain greater
insight into the study’s measures.
l Provide a point of comparison between the
regions to understand the dynamics of food
security and the mechanisms that may be
employed to address the unique issues that are
experienced within a region.
l Explore the role of regional commonalities—
countries within a region tend to have similar
environments, problems, solutions and, in some
cases, may share common institutions.
l Create more accurate country comparisons and a
more nuanced understanding of food security by
narrowing the frame of analysis.
l Offer insight into the economic, political and
social context of the results of the 2014 GFSI.
A regional analysis of food security

Overview
On a regional level, structural elements, which are
generally more similar within regions than across
the globe, tend to play an extremely important role
in determining food security. Also, in regions that
include countries with different economic systems,
policy environments, agricultural infrastructures
and nutritional standards, the gap in food security
between best and worst performers is wider. These
structural elements tend to change little year on
year; however, when changes do occur, they have a
greater impact on food security than other factors
explored in the index.
l Economic development has the largest impact
on food security, as shown by the strong
correlation between food affordability and food
security. The top performers in the index are rich
countries with developed economies; these tend
Regional results and comparisons
Ranking/score table of all regions
Overall Rank Region 2014 GFSI Score
1 North America 80.0
2 Europe 75.4
3 Middle East and North Africa 57.4
4 Central and South America 56.0
5 Asia and Pacific 55.0
6 Sub-Saharan Africa 36.1
to have relatively high levels of GDP per capita
and low shares of household expenditure on
food. Although emerging economies are
experiencing rapid GDP growth, resulting in
increased Affordability scores and greater urban
absorption capacity, the gap between developed
and developing countries is still great.
l The most food-secure countries also tend to
have developed infrastructures, including
advanced agricultural infrastructures and
facilities and systems that support agricultural
investment and research and development
(R&D). Transport infrastructure, including road
and port systems, and adequate crop storage
facilities drive food availability and are
underdeveloped and undersupplied across
food-insecure countries owing to
underinvestment.

l A stable, efficient and functional policy
environment is crucial for food security. More
food-insecure regions, as well as countries,
frequently have higher political stability risk and
corruption levels, alongside weaker institutions
that fail to provide appropriate government
regulation and oversight. By contrast, the more
food-secure regions have robust policy
environments that facilitate food accessibility
through stable supply chains, and affordability
through food safety-net programmes.
l Nutrition plays an important role in determining
food security. Highly food-secure countries have
diversified diets and a high quality of protein.
Their diets contain a high level of
micronutrients, including iron and vitamin A.
More food-insecure countries are often deprived
of nutritious diets and lack organisations that
regulate nutritional standards.
Regional results
North America and Europe, which collectively
encompass 29 of the 109 countries in the index,
recorded the strongest performances in the GFSI,
driven by the developed countries’ dominance of
those regions.
l As two regions comprised primarily of rich
countries, Europe and North America have high
levels of GDP per capita at an average of
US$32,462 measured in terms of purchasing
power parity (PPP), compared with an average of
US$9,900 at PPP in the other four regions, while
an average of 17.7% of household expenditure
goes on food—just over half the global average
of 34.5%.
l Wealth corresponds with high sufficiency of food
supply, developed agricultural infrastructure,
strong diet diversification, relatively low
political stability risk and low corruption levels
(Ukraine and Russia are exceptions). These
factors contribute to North America’s and
Europe’s first and second place rankings
respectively in the overall index and in each of
the categories.
Availability
Rank Region Score
2 Europe 69.8
Affordability
Rank Region Score
2 Europe 80.3

The next three highest-ranked regions—the Middle
East & North Africa (MENA), Central & South
America and Asia & Pacific—together account for
52 countries in the index. They all fall within a
range of 2.4 points and share several common
factors:
l They are comprised of a mixture of developed
and developing countries that vary in terms of
economic and political structures.
l MENA’s strong Affordability score (third
overall), which is 2.3 points ahead of Central &
South America, and its third-place tie in Quality
& Safety with Central & South America account
for its overall third-place regional rank in the
index.
l Asia & Pacific’s comparatively high percentage
of the population under the global poverty line
and low diet diversification explain its lower
scores in the Affordability and Quality & Safety
categories.
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the lowest regional
score in the 2014 GFSI, with an overall score that is
just two-thirds that of the Asia & Pacific region.
l It also scores the lowest in each of the
Affordability, Availability and Quality & Safety
categories, owing to the large percentage of
low-income countries in the region; of the 28
countries included in the region, 18 are low-
income, according to World Bank income
classifications.
l Low agricultural import tariffs and commitment
to agricultural research and development, while
still weak, are areas of relative strength in
comparison with select regions, but
underdeveloped agricultural infrastructure, low
income levels and poor diet diversification drive
the region’s poor results.
Quality & Safety
Rank Region Score
2 Europe 78.9
=3 Central and South America 59.5
=3 Middle East and North Africa 59.5

The Asia & Pacific region is one of the most diverse
in the world. It contains the world’s two largest
countries—China and India—which, in line with
their vast populations, are the world’s biggest
producers and consumers of many types of food. It
also contains much more sparsely populated
nations, such as those in Central Asia. Climates and
soils vary enormously. Some countries, such as
Vietnam, Thailand, China, New Zealand and
Australia, are important exporters of agricultural
commodities in the global market. Others are major
importers, with the Philippines, for example,
traditionally ranking among the world’s top rice
importers. The diverse climates, population sizes,
levels of development and agricultural production
capacities of the countries in Asia & Pacific make
the region extremely vulnerable to risks to food
security and food prices.
Natural disasters have challenged the region in
recent years. Although the wealthier states in the
region are able to rebound from the damage
caused by such disasters, poorer countries’ food
security is severely affected by such events, and
they are slow to recover. The impact of Typhoon
Haiyan, which struck in November 2013, on food
security in the poorer eastern parts of the
Philippines may linger for years. Likewise, flooding
hampered food security in many poorer parts of
India and south-east Asia last year. By contrast,
Japan’s food security was barely affected by the
earthquake and tsunami that struck that country’s
east coast in 2011.
Food prices vary significantly across the Asia &
Pacific region, based on local supply-and-demand
dynamics, but some new patterns are emerging.
Rising Chinese demand is shifting market dynamics
for some key sectors. The impact of Chinese
consumers in pushing up dairy prices has been
much discussed and was again in evidence over the
last year (to the benefit of milk-exporting New
Zealand). China’s demand for meat is also an
important driver of prices in markets for pork and
beef, as well as some seafood products.
In addition, China is gradually liberalising
policies that had sought to protect self-sufficiency
in most key categories of grain. This process, which
began several years ago with soybeans, has
resulted in China playing an increasing role as an
importer of grains such as rice and maize. Although
its domestic consumption of rice is falling, China’s
imports of rice are expected to grow strongly in
2013-14, which will prop up prices. China has
expanded investments in Sub-Saharan Africa to
capture new agricultural markets for its imports.
Imports from the Philippines and Indonesia are
also expected to recover in 2014 from relatively
weak levels in 2013. This support for the rice
market is welcome at a time when Thailand’s policy
of subsidising rice farmers by purchasing rice at
above-market prices has led to worryingly large
stockpiles being built up in that country, even as
increased exports from Vietnam have served to
drive global rice prices down.
Local market dynamics often obscure global
Food security in Asia & Pacific

trends. For example, despite the drop in global rice
prices, the local price of rice in India increased
sharply last year, contributing to a wider problem
with rapid food price inflation that has become
entrenched in that country. The government’s
National Food Security Act, which was signed into
law in 2013 and provides subsidised access to key
grains such as rice, wheat and millet, has bolstered
the upward pressure on food prices.
Regional highlights
Collectively, Asia & Pacific is one of the lowest-
scoring regions for food security, coming ahead of
only Sub-Saharan Africa. However, this low overall
score disguises sharp differences between wealthy
nations and underdeveloped ones, and these
divides are more acute within Asia than within any
other region. If the top five countries within the
region—Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Japan
and South Korea—were considered separately, that
region would rank second globally. By contrast,
poor countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal,
Myanmar and Cambodia have some of the highest
levels of food insecurity seen around the world.
Asia’s food security overall, however, is
improving. Of the 22 nations in Asia covered by the
GFSI, 15 experienced an overall improvement in
their scores between 2013 and 2014, while only
three—Myanmar, Bangladesh and Vietnam—saw a
decline. This gave an overall score improvement for
the region of 0.9, which was broadly in line with
the average improvement seen in other regions
around the world. Nonetheless, the fact that the
scale of the improvement in 2013 was relatively
modest must be seen as a disappointment, given
that Asia was the world’s fastest-growing region
economically over the year.
In general, Asia’s economic growth contributes
positively to underlying levels of food security.
However, in the 2014 index factors besides
economic performance had an impact on food
security scores, since Myanmar, Bangladesh and
Vietnam all experienced robust economic growth
over the year. It is also notable that political
turmoil did not drive movements in food security
scores. Although Bangladesh did experience rising
political tensions ahead of the January 2014
general election, these were not sufficient to
increase political stability risk in a manner that
would impact food security. Similarly, Thailand’s
ongoing political crisis, which resulted in a slight
increase in political stability risk, did not prevent a
modest improvement in its GFSI score between
2013 and 2014 because of other factors that
buttressed this increase in risk. Political instability
will, of course, begin to have a wider impact on
food security if it is sustained, but it has not had
much of a negative impact in most Asian countries
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
240
260
Jan
2000
Jan
2001
Jan
2002
Jan
2003
Jan
2004
Jan
2005
Jan
2006
Jan
2007
Jan
2008
Jan
2009
Jan
2010
Jan
2011
Jan
2012
Jan
2013
India Food price inflation
Jan 2005=100
Source: Economist Intelligence Unit; FAO.

over the last year.
There does, however, seem to have been a
strong correlation between shifts in food
affordability and changes in the GFSI. All three
Asian countries that saw their overall scores fall
witnessed a deterioration in affordability as
households were forced to spend a growing
proportion of their incomes on food. Bangladesh
and Vietnam also experienced a decline in their
scores for farmers’ access to finance, which
depressed their scores for food affordability and
dragged down their overall performance.
Regional strengths: Robust
governance
Asia & Pacific’s key strength lies in the relatively
impressive levels of governance seen in the region.
Many countries which are less developed
economically still have governments that are able
to manage and implement policy effectively,
particularly in the agricultural sector. This has
helped to ensure that places such as Indonesia,
China and Vietnam have low levels of volatility
when it comes to agricultural output. It is also a
factor in the region’s good scores for nutritional
standards. Only a handful of Asian governments
have not yet implemented national dietary
guidelines and nutritional monitoring systems, and
all countries in the region have a national nutrition
strategy. Countries are also putting in place food
safety nets: Azerbaijan, New Zealand, Pakistan,
Tajikistan and Thailand all saw score improvements
in this category in 2014. Governance standards
continue to be raised, with China, Malaysia, Nepal
and Pakistan all seeing slight improvements in
their scores for corruption in the 2014 GFSI
compared with 2013; corruption levels,
nevertheless, remain high on average across the
region.
Good governance also supports high urban
absorption capacity in countries across the region,
such as Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan, bolstering rapid
economic growth and well-balanced rural-urban
policies that help to control the pace of migration
from the countryside to the cities and reduce the
negative side effects associated with mass
urbanisation. Nonetheless, there can also be
downsides to these policies. China’s hukou
household registration system, for example, not
only curbs urbanisation, but also ensures that rural
dwellers get access to a much lower quality of
public services—one of the reasons that the
government is moving to relax the policy.
Asia & Pacific also has relatively low agricultural
import tariffs. This at least partly reflects the
strong web of free-trade agreements (FTAs) in
place. While countries in Asia (notably India) have
often been blamed for the lack of progress on
global deals under the World Trade Organisation
(WTO), they have moved rapidly to cut tariffs,
including on agricultural goods, through bilateral
and regional deals. However, south and central
Asian nations have moved more slowly on this front
than those in east Asia and south-east Asia
(including Australia and New Zealand).
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Agricultural import tariffs, by country
%
South Asia
Nepal
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Sri Lanka
India
Central Asia
Tajikistan
Kazakhstan
Azerbaijan
Uzbekistan
South-east Asia
Singapore
Indonesia
Myanmar
Malaysia
Cambodia
Vietnam
Thailand
East Asia
Australia
New Zealand
China
Japan
South Korea
Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

Regional weaknesses: Poverty and
underdevelopment
The region’s weakest food security scores are
closely correlated to levels of economic
development. With the notable exception of the
region’s five higher-income countries (Japan,
Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and
Singapore), average levels of GDP per capita are
low. High levels of poverty contribute to
particularly low levels of vegetal iron in Asian diets.
Poorer households are less able to afford the diet
diversification that makes for a healthy diet. In
Asia & Pacific, such households tend to rely
disproportionately on rice-based meals, a poor
source of vegetal iron. The low levels of meat and
fish consumption associated with poverty further
compound the problem of iron deficiency, since
meat and fish consumption enhances the
absorption of vegetal iron.
Low levels of economic development may also
be a factor behind the unusually weak level of
public spending on agricultural research and
development (R&D) in Asia. As a whole, the region
scores the lowest out of any region in the index,
with a score of just 5.1 out of 100. It is particularly
surprising that even economies where agriculture
plays an important role, such as Australia and New
Zealand, still see relatively low levels of public R&D
spending. This may reflect a cultural reluctance to
invest public money in agricultural research, or the
absence of state entities like Brazil’s Embrapa,
through which research funds can be channelled.
In Asia’s poorer economies, state agricultural R&D
spending is universally below 0.5% of agricultural
GDP.

The countries of Asia & Pacific
Asia & Pacific can be broadly divided into three
regions. The region’s five developed countries—
Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and
South Korea—are relatively wealthy, with good
infrastructure, effective governments and sound
safety nets. Food security is generally high in these
locations. The nations of Central Asia—Kazakhstan,
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan—have
varying levels of economic development, but
generally have poor infrastructure and high levels
of corruption. Diets there are more closely related
to those in the Middle East than they are to those
in South or East Asia. The rest of the region is
dominated by emerging markets. Many of these
countries struggle with food security issues, but
their rankings in the GFSI tend to correlate closely
with levels of GDP per capita.
Country highlights
Levels of food security vary throughout Asia &
Pacific, and the gap between rich and poor nations
is apparent across the GFSI. As family incomes rise,
food costs tend to eat up a smaller proportion of the
family spending budget, improving affordability
metrics. In Cambodia and Myanmar, levels of food
spending as a proportion of total household
Correlation between GFSI percentage of household expenditure on food score and GFSI agricultural infrastructure score
Household expenditure v Agricultural infrastructure, Asia & Pacific
Source: Economist Intelligence Unit
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Agriculturalinfrastructure
Food consumption as share of household expenditure
Food consumption as share of household expenditure: Rating 0–100
Agricultural infrastructure: Rating 0-100
Correlation (x,y) -0.87

expenditure are among the highest in the world, at
nearly 71%, while Singaporean and Australian
families spend very little of their total household
budget on food, at 6.7% and 10.2%, respectively.
Wealthier states are also able to afford better
infrastructure, both in terms of physical
infrastructure (ports, roads and storage facilities)
that improves the logistics of food supply, and in
terms of the soft infrastructure of government that
improves elements of food security, such as food
safety and monitoring. There is a very strong
correlation between levels of economic
development and levels of agricultural
infrastructure in Asia. Countries such as Singapore,
Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea top
the list, while Nepal, Cambodia and Tajikistan score
poorly. Within this pattern, China scores unusually
highly relative to its GDP per capita, while most
Central Asian nations score relatively poorly. The
former reflects China’s infrastructure investment-
led growth model, while the latter may partly be
owing to the land-locked nature of countries such
as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
A similar pattern is present with regard to food
safety. Malaysia scores relatively well, in line with
its higher GDP per capita, while Indonesia, which
has a lower GDP per capita, does poorly. This partly
reflects the impressive investments that the former
has made to ensure the availability of potable
water supplies, while Indonesia has been unable to
make these investments.
Food security successes
Given the correlation between economic prosperity
and food security, it is not surprising that the
wealthiest countries in the region—Japan, South
Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore—
perform considerably stronger than other countries
in the index. Japan and South Korea lag slightly
behind the three other rich nations, partly owing
to extremely low levels of public R&D spending on
agriculture for advanced economies. South Korea’s
protectionist tariffs also serve as a drag on its
scores. By contrast, Australia, New Zealand and
Singapore are all staunch free traders—with the
former two also being major exporters of
agricultural products.
Some of the region’s weaker performers have
also made rapid progress over the last year. Nepal
and Azerbaijan posted some of the strongest gains
in the index. Nepal’s political situation remains
fragile, but it has improved slightly compared with
a year ago, resulting in score improvements in
corruption and political stability risk that helped to
lift the country’s overall food security scores. Both
Nepal and Azerbaijan saw significant improvements
in Affordability, as the proportion of the household
budget taken up by food spending fell. The two
countries also slightly reduced the average tariffs
imposed on agricultural imports. Azerbaijan’s score
was further bolstered by the establishment of a
rudimentary food safety net, a product of a series
Public expenditure on agricultural R&D, by region and country
2014 score, 0-100 where 100=best
*Japan and South Korea had a score of 0 in 2014. Source: Economist Intelligence Unit
North
America
Europe Middle East
and North
Africa
Sub-Saha-
ran Africa
Central and
South
America
Asia and
Pacific
New Zealand Australia Singapore Japan* South
Korea*
0
10
20
30
40
50

of social assistance programmes which began in
the early 2000s and which have continued to
expand to include food safety nets. Additionally,
Azerbaijan experienced a score increase in
Availability owing to a drop in the urbanisation
rate and higher real GDP growth, which lead to a
large score increase in urban absorption capacity.
Food security challenges
It is unsurprising that Cambodia, Bangladesh and
Myanmar have the lowest food security scores in
the Asia & Pacific region. The three boast some of
the lowest levels of annual GDP per capita in terms
of purchasing power parity (PPP) in Asia, at
US$2,620, US$1,970 and US$1,300 respectively.
What is more worrying is that despite
comparatively rapid economic growth over the past
year, which might have been expected to improve
their metrics, food security scores in Myanmar and
Bangladesh actually declined.
The sharp decline in Myanmar’s rating was
driven by falls in its score for both Affordability and
Quality & Safety. However, these may be less of a
source for concern than might at first appear, as
the drops largely reflect more accurate data rather
than a deterioration of the situation on the
ground. Because of the country’s past political
isolation, few multilateral organisations had a
presence there. This, combined with the country’s
weak internal capacities, meant that its statistical
data were a product of weak estimates. As
Myanmar’s government has pursued economic
reform and political opening, the quality of data
has improved, but many measures, such as GDP per
capita in PPP terms and food as a proportion of
total household spending, have deteriorated as
better information has become available. The
underlying picture in Myanmar is of a country
undergoing overdue reforms that should serve to
improve food security, but the political reform
process remains fragile, with a high risk of
reversals.
In Bangladesh, a slight slowing of economic
growth over the last year put downward pressure
on the country’s score for its urban absorption
capacity, resulting in a marginal dip in its food
availability score. However, the bigger reason for
the decline in its overall GFSI score was a drop in
Affordability as access to financing among farmers
deteriorated. This development was linked to the
ongoing political battle between the country’s
government and Muhammad Yunus, which has
undermined the operations of Mr Yunus’ Grameen
Bank, the biggest microlender in Bangladesh.

Appendix
Asia & Pacific Central & South
America
Europe Middle East &
North Africa
North America Sub-Saharan Africa
Australia Argentina Austria Algeria Canada Angola
Azerbaijan Bolivia Belarus Egypt Mexico Benin
Bangladesh Brazil Belgium Israel United States Botswana
Cambodia Chile Bulgaria Jordan Burkina Faso
China Colombia Czech Republic Kuwait Burundi
India Costa Rica Denmark Morocco Cameroon
Indonesia Dominican Republic Finland Saudi Arabia Chad
Japan Ecuador France Syria Congo (Dem. Rep.)
Kazakhstan El Salvador Germany Tunisia Côte d’Ivoire
Malaysia Guatemala Greece Turkey Ethiopia
Myanmar Haiti Hungary United Arab Emirates Ghana
Nepal Honduras Ireland Yemen Guinea
New Zealand Nicaragua Italy Kenya
Pakistan Panama Netherlands Madagascar
Philippines Paraguay Norway Malawi
Singapore Peru Poland Mali
South Korea Uruguay Portugal Mozambique
Sri Lanka Venezuela Romania Niger
Tajikistan Russia Nigeria
Thailand Serbia Rwanda
Uzbekistan Slovakia Senegal
Vietnam Spain Sierra Leone
Sweden South Africa
Switzerland Sudan
Ukraine Tanzania
United Kingdom Togo
Uganda
Zambia
Country selection table

These tables list the rankings and scores for Asia & Pacific in the overall index and across the three categories
(Affordability, Availability and Quality & Safety).
Overall ranking Affordability
Overall Rank Country Score Rank Country Score
1 Singapore 84.3 1 Singapore 94.0
2 New Zealand 82.2 2 Australia 91.8
3 Australia 81.9 3 New Zealand 85.2
4 Japan 77.8 4 Japan 85.0
5 South Korea 73.2 5 South Korea 78.0
6 Malaysia 68.0 6 Malaysia 66.9
7 China 62.2 7 Thailand 63.9
8 Thailand 59.9 8 China 58.9
9 Kazakhstan 53.3 9 Kazakhstan 58.2
10 Sri Lanka 51.7 10 Azerbaijan 51.3
11 Azerbaijan 50.3 11 Sri Lanka 49.6
12 Philippines 49.4 12 India 44.7
13 Vietnam 49.1 13 Philippines 44.1
14 India 48.3 14 Indonesia 43.3
15 Indonesia 46.5 15 Vietnam 40.0
16 Uzbekistan 46.0 16 Tajikistan 37.8
17 Pakistan 43.6 17 Uzbekistan 37.6
18 Tajikistan 38.7 18 Pakistan 37.1
19 Nepal 37.7 19 Myanmar 31.5
20 Myanmar 37.6 20 Bangladesh 30.9
21 Bangladesh 36.3 21 Cambodia 28.5
22 Cambodia 33.1 22 Nepal 27.3
Availability Quality & Safety
Rank Country Score Rank Country Score
1 New Zealand 79.9 1 Australia 84.8
2 Singapore 78.5 2 New Zealand 81.1
3 Australia 71.9 3 Japan 79.3
4 Japan 70.6 4 South Korea 77.1
5 Malaysia 68.2 5 Singapore 76.0
6 South Korea 67.4 6 Kazakhstan 70.3
7 China 63.5 7 Malaysia 70.0
8 Thailand 57.2 8 China 66.6
9 Vietnam 56.0 9 Thailand 57.4
10 Sri Lanka 55.1 10 Pakistan 55.5
11 India 53.1 11 Philippines 54.3
12 Philippines 52.3 12 Vietnam 52.9
13 Uzbekistan 51.5 13 Uzbekistan 51.4
14 Indonesia 51.1 14 Sri Lanka 47.5
15 Azerbaijan 51.0 15 Azerbaijan 45.7
16 Nepal 45.4 16 India 44.0
17 Pakistan 45.3 17 Nepal 42.3
18 Myanmar 43.9 18 Indonesia 42.0
19 Bangladesh 43.2 19 Tajikistan 40.2
20 Kazakhstan 42.7 20 Myanmar 35.3
21 Tajikistan 39.0 21 Cambodia 35.2
22 Cambodia 36.5 22 Bangladesh 31.2
Appendix

These tables list the year-on-year score changes, 2014 v 2013, for Asia & Pacific in the overall index and across the
three categories (Affordability, Availability and Quality & Safety).
Overall Ranking Affordability
Country Y-o-Y change Country Y-o-Y change
Azerbaijan 4.6 Azerbaijan 9.0
Nepal 3.4 Uzbekistan 6.5
Singapore 2.7 India 6.4
Uzbekistan 2.5 Nepal 4.9
India 2.4 Pakistan 4.3
Malaysia 2.0 Tajikistan 4.1
South Korea 1.5 Australia 4.0
Pakistan 1.5 Malaysia 3.8
Sri Lanka 1.3 Thailand 3.0
Tajikistan 1.3 Sri Lanka 3.0
China 1.2 Japan 2.8
Australia 0.8 South Korea 2.6
Thailand 0.5 New Zealand 2.3
New Zealand 0.3 Indonesia 1.1
Philippines 0.3 Kazakhstan 0.6
Japan 0.0 Philippines 0.6
Kazakhstan 0.0 Cambodia 0.6
Indonesia 0.0 China 0.4
Cambodia 0.0 Singapore 0.1
Vietnam -0.2 Vietnam -2.1
Bangladesh -1.0 Bangladesh -2.1
Myanmar -4.1 Myanmar -6.9
Availability Quality & Safety
Country Y-o-Y change Country Y-o-Y change
Singapore 4.7 Cambodia 6.0
Myanmar 3.4 Singapore 4.2
Nepal 3.3 Vietnam 2.3
Azerbaijan 2.1 China 0.9
China 1.8 Tajikistan 0.7
South Korea 1.3 Sri Lanka 0.5
Malaysia 0.9 Azerbaijan 0.5
Vietnam 0.6 Kazakhstan 0.4
Philippines 0.2 Bangladesh 0.3
Sri Lanka 0.1 New Zealand 0.1
Pakistan -0.2 Malaysia 0.0
India -0.3 Uzbekistan -0.1
Uzbekistan -0.3 Indonesia -0.1
Bangladesh -0.3 Philippines -0.2
Kazakhstan -0.7 Nepal -0.2
Tajikistan -0.9 Japan -0.3
Indonesia -1.1 India -0.5
New Zealand -1.3 Thailand -0.6
Thailand -1.3 Australia -0.6
Australia -1.6 Pakistan -0.8
Japan -2.6 South Korea -1.0
Cambodia -2.7 Myanmar -17.6
Appendix

Whilst every effort has been taken to verify the accuracy of this
information, neither The Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd. nor the
sponsor of this report can accept any responsibility or liability
for reliance by any person on this white paper or any of the
information, opinions or conclusions set out in the white paper.
Cover:Getty

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