By NISHA RAMCHANDANI

SINGAPORE has moved up the rankings for the world's top country brand, jumping from 24th place to 13th in this year's Country Brand Index (CBI).

The United States was rated top out of 102 countries, followed by Canada, then Australia.

The CBI was conducted by consultancy FutureBrand in conjunction with public relations firm Weber Shandwick.

True to its reputation, Singapore was ranked best country brand for shopping, beating the US and Japan.

It was also ranked No. 1 as the easiest destination to do business in.

However, it slipped to No. 5 as the place where people would most like to start doing business.

Other categories where Singapore made the top five included preferred off-site convention destination (third) and ease of travel (fourth).

Singapore was also ranked fourth for prevalence of the latest technologies, fifth for standard of living and eighth for most oriented towards environmental protection.

'The next step for Singapore is embracing more authentic characteristics and feeling a bit more confident about that,' said Tim Riches, chief executive officer of FutureBrand (Singapore).

'Singapore has been quite hesitant to allow authentic Singaporean culture into the spotlight.'

It is important to establish a more distinctive style, he said.

In terms of authenticity, Singapore was ranked 40th.

According to Mr Riches, the volatile economy this year generally resulted in less optimistic perceptions of other countries. 'There's more of a negative outlook compared to previous years,' he told BT.

There was also a greater focus on value.

'Asia as a region is considered to be good value,' he said, pointing out that six of the top 10 countries that offered value-for-money were from the Asia-Pacific.

Interestingly, the perception of a country's safety - or lack thereof - did not necessarily have a dampening impact on its popularity.

Vietnam, which was ranked 85th in terms of safety, was still rated the 25th country that people wished to visit or re-visit.

The FutureBrand CBI, now in its fifth year, polls approximately 3,000 business and leisure travellers from nine countries.

This article was first published in The Business Times.