The metric seeks to quantify the “extent to which government policies are conducive to competitiveness” within a country.
Explaining the results of the rankings, IMD Professor Stéphane Garelli, Director of IMD’s World Competitiveness Center, said, “‘World Competitiveness 2.0’ is thus characterised by a greater self-reliance of countries. It increasingly emphasizes re-industrialization, exports, and a more critical look at delocalization. This trend is triggered by the rise in commodity and transport prices and higher labor costs in emerging economies.”
The report also demonstrates the discrepancies between the public and private sector in terms of efficiency, in which the Japanese government is revealed to lag far behind its private sector: the government’s efficiency rank is a full 23 points below its business rank.
Other countries in need of improvement within the Asia-Pacific region are India, China, Philippines and Taiwan, where the business ranking is at least 6 points higher than the government ranking. According to Garelli, a key issue is the lag between government reforms and economic imperatives.
“Government spending has reached new highs since the recession: on average 47% of the GDPs in the most advanced economies. 12 European countries are already above the 50% threshold. The 23 biggest spenders are all European governments. How long can it last? In a new world of ‘state capitalism’, government efficiency will become a key determinant to competitiveness,” Professor Garelli said.
The overall competitiveness rank (an aggregate of business and government efficiency) was dominated by Hong Kong and the USA, which toppled Singapore – last year’s leader – to share first place in the table. While the government efficiency of the USA lagged far behind that of Hong Kong and Singapore, its overall rank was helped greatly by its private sector.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Rahul Joshi
Quelle/Source: futuregov, 18.05.2011
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