Thailand ranks down at 56 out of 72 countries as Laos, Libya and Iraq occupy the bottom of the rankings.
The global survey of 950,000 adults across 72 countries and territories links English proficiency with income, innovation and quality of life.
“In a volatile global economy, English proficiency is one of the few skills with proven ability to generate opportunities and strengthen employability,” said Minh Tran, EF’s director of research.
“It takes a great deal of effort and investment to steer a country or company towards a future with an English-speaking workforce. The EF EPI addresses these challenges and prompts global discussions about the best practices of language education.”
For the first time, an Asian country, Singapore, is in the highest proficiency band. Malaysia and the Philippines are also in the top 15 countries worldwide.
English proficiency in Europe remains the strongest in the world by a wide margin, while countries in the Middle East and North Africa continue to occupy the lowest ranks.
Of all the regions surveyed, Latin America is the only region that experienced a decline in English proficiency in the past year.
Countries making the most progress in English proficiency include France, Qatar and Singapore. Countries with the steepest declines include Iraq, Japan and Peru.
Young adults aged 18-25 have the strongest English proficiency worldwide, although some countries have markedly different national trends.
Women have stronger English skills than men in almost all countries and age groups.
English proficiency remains a key indicator of economic competitiveness at both the individual and national levels.
Higher English proficiency correlates with higher incomes, better quality of life, greater connectivity and more dynamic business environments.

It will make them more closely aligned with their international peers under similar solvency regimes.
The RBC 2 regime is being formulated in line with the terms of the ICP17 (insurance core principles) capital-adequacy standards.
“The more robust rules will increase confidence around the financial strength of the sector. But several challenges lie ahead, in particular for medium and small players that will need to cope with potentially more stringent capital requirements,” Jeffrey Liew, head of Fitch’s Asia-Pacific insurance ratings group, said at an industry briefing organised by Fitch Ratings (Thailand) in Bangkok.
Liew also discussed Fitch’s insurance rating methodology and Prism factor-based model used in assessing the financial strength of life and non-life insurers across the Asia-Pacific region.
Underwriting, investment and capital assessments are among the many fundamental building blocks of the agency’s approach to rating the insurance sector’s financial strength.
Chuchatr Pramoolpol, deputy secretary-general of Thailand’s Insurance Commission, outlined the outlook for the country’s regulatory framework and the changes in investment and solvency rules.
Julien Godart, senior manager and Asean technology lead for Accenture Consulting Singapore, discussed the use of big data and analytics for the insurance industry to tackle fraud and improve regulatory compliance.
More than 80 participants from the regulatory, insurance and financial sectors attended the briefing.

Under this agreement signed by Dentsu’s two subsidiaries – media investment arm Amplifi and programmatic service unit Amnet – Dentsu’s clients worldwide can receive privileges with highly effective media trading tools via this automated platform operated by Asia Media Exchange (AsiaMX).
“Dentsu is one of the major players in the media business that can help turn our mission into reality,” Nick Chuah, co-founder and chief commercial officer of AsiaMX, said yesterday.
“Besides working with Dentsu’s existing clients, we hope to attract new ones to be a part of this excitement, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises with small budgets for advertising.”
The company also welcomes other ad-media agencies for future collaboration to empower the whole industry in preparation for programmatic TV advertising buying and planning, he said.
Sunil Yadav, president of Amplifi Asia Pacific, said this movement was part of his group’s strategy to be fully digitised across media platforms.
With this cornerstone relationship with AsiaMX, the company can extend its opportunity to access premium TV content programmatically and bring automation to TV planning and buying along with audience-based targeting capabilities.
AsiaMX claims Bt1.5 billion of inventory in TV ad airtime in the Asia-Pacific region, of which Bt1.2 billion is from local TV stations including Mono 29, One31, GMM25, Channel 3, Workpoint TV, Thairath TV, True4U, Channel 7 and Nation TV.
The others are satellite and Internet platforms such as Dek-D Interaction and Asia Satellite TV.
“Having this inventory availability, we engulf more than 90 per cent of audience reach nationwide,” Chuah said.
After testing the system with local TV broadcasters and media agencies, the company is confident that it can achieve at least 1 per cent of total media trading by next year, or about Bt1 billion, over its own system.
“Television still remains the most reached medium in Asia-Pacific, particularly in Thailand,” Chuah said.
According to Dentsu Aegis Network’s latest Carat data, TV in September represented 63.1 per cent of the ad industry, higher than an average rate of 46.4 per cent across Asia and the Pacific.
“Along with other global trends including online flight booking, mobile shopping and marketing, artificial intelligence or robotics, high-frequency trading, the role of programmatic advertising is also increasingly important in media trading,” he said.

RHB Securities (Thailand) is the second broker-partner of StockRadars.
The aim is to strengthen the business of both fintechs and brokers.
Teerachart Kortrakul, founder and chief executive officer of SiamSquared Technologies (Thailand), said the move will expand StockRadars’ services from being tools for decision-making in trading to being tools for trading.
“This deal is for Thailand only, but we are hopeful to go regional with RHB Securities (Thailand), which has footprints many countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong,” he said.
The partners plan to approach potential investors who mostly put their money in funds rather than stocks, since RHB provides a single account for trading both funds and stocks.
SiamSquared also introduced FundRadars for those investing in funds.
StockRadars has been downloaded 400,000 times and counts 50,000 active users.
The company expects to get FundRadars downloaded 10,000 times this year.
“Being partners with brokers will help us get revenue under the B2B2C model, which means we get paid by brokers while the service is used by investors who are brokers’ partners,” Teerachart said.
In the second quarter of this year, SiamSquared partnered with Globlex Securities to allow investors to trade stocks via the StockRadars app.
Funds are the new market area where SiamSquared is gearing up to catch up.
Thailand has about 600,000 investors. Some 250,000 are active online traders. There are eight times as many funds traders as stock traders, Teerachart said.
“This move is to address people’s needs in the current situation. They are forced to invest in trading themselves rather than leave their money in a savings account,” he said.

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) hired Frost & Sullivan to study the expected benefits from the event.
The four-day convention is being held at IMPACT Arena, Exhibition & Convention Centre in a collaboration of the NBTC, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, and the Inter-nationalz Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The event, which comprises seminars and exhibitions, is a global platform to accelerate innovations in information and communications technology |for social and economic development of businesses of all sizes |as well as government agencies.
About 25,000 attendees are expected, of whom about 40 per cent will be foreigners from all around the world and 60 per cent Thais and expatriates.
Frost & Sullivan also anticipates Bt22.3 million in tax revenue from the event, which will also employ 1,529 people.
The NBTC spent Bt300 million to prepare the event.
In a separate development, the NBTC yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bhutan InfoComm and Media Authority to promote collaboration in several areas, including information exchange on regulations for managing telecom and broadcasting spectra.
The commission also signed a memorandum of cooperation with Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications to promote collaboration on telecom affairs and cybersecurity and telecom and broadcast infrastructure protection, content business matching, and innovative technology.
Thailand hosted the ITU World event for the first time in 2013 and also ITU Asia 2008. Air Chief Marshal Prajin Juntong, deputy prime minister and acting minister of digital economy and society, said Thailand’s ranking on the ITU’s global ICT index was expected to be better next year. In 2015, Thailand was ranked 74th, up 18 levels from 92nd in 2010.
He said one contribution to higher ranking would be the |government’s upcoming national broadband Internet project, aiming to provide complete broadband connectivity to 40,000 villages nationwide by |the end of next year.

The CAAT and the International Air Transport Association agreed on November 1 to implement the new charge, but it did not go into full effect until yesterday.
The extra fee is being added to air-ticket prices by IATA members, and the global aviation authority will also get a cut of the proceeds.
Currently, IATA oversees and supervises 265 aviation authorities representing 85 per cent of global aviation.
According to the Tourism Association of Thailand, the |country is expected to receive more than 32 million international tourists this year, while more than six million Thais will travel overseas.
Based on the total passenger numbers from two flights per trip per person, the new surcharge should generate Bt1.1 billion per year.
Charoen Wangananont, president of the Association of Thai Travel Agents (ATTA), expressed doubts about the new surcharge.
He also wondered why foreign organisations like IATA have the right to intervene in Thailand’s aviation system on such a big decision, saying it is not fair to make travellers into and out of this country to a fee that IATA benefits from.
“If the government wants to solve aviation problem or develops further projects, it should grant a special budget and let the Thai authority do it, not ask for money from passengers. And IATA should not be involved in this issue,” Charoen said.
He said aviation experts working at the CAAT should be paid by the Thai government, not by passengers.
In the third quarter, 8.2 million foreigners travelled to Thailand. China continued to be the main source market, with 2.4 million visitors during the three months. Arrivals from Europe came in at around 1.2 million, up 12 per cent from the third quarter last year, while there were 2.2 million visitors from Asean countries or up 14 per cent.
IATA said last week that global passenger traffic in September grew 7 per cent compared with the same month in 2015. This was the strongest year-over-year increase in seven months.
Capacity climbed 6.6 per cent.
European carriers saw September demand rise 5.2 per cent over September 2015.
Asia-Pacific airlines’ traffic rose 8.6 per cent in September compared with the year-ago period, although there are still signs of Asian travellers being put off by terrorism in Europe.
Middle East carriers had an 11.5-per-cent rise in demand in September compared with a year ago.