Ranking first for Bahrain
MANAMA: Bahrain has been included in the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking (WCR) for the first time in the ranking’s 34-year history.
The kingdom placed 30th in the list which assesses 63 economies’ economic competitiveness, with Denmark reaching the number one spot.
Switzerland came in 2nd, down from first in 2021, Singapore was third (up from fifth) and Sweden fell two places to fourth.
Founded 75 years ago by business leaders, IMD is an independent academic institution with Swiss roots and global reach.
Created by the IMD World Competitiveness Centre (WCC), the 2022 WCR measured economic competitiveness by analysing 163 pieces of hard data, taken from multiple sources and covering the 2021 period.
It added its own survey responses to this; the majority of answers given in the first quarter of 2022 by senior executives.
They were collected by the WCC’s 56 global partner institutes (ranging from chambers of commerce to government agencies and universities) and from some 2,000 IMD alumni.
All data was then fed into four factors (economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure), each with sub-factors.
Bahrain’s business-friendly environment was picked as the key attractiveness factor by a majority of respondents to the executive opinion survey, whereas skilled workforce, reliable infrastructure, open and positive attitudes and competency of government also got high scores.
Cost competitiveness, high educational level, access to financing, policy stability and predictability, quality of corporate governance, effective legal environment, competitive tax regime, dynamism of the economy, effective labour relations, and strong R&D culture were the other indicators in the total of 15.
One major finding across economies is that inflationary pressures are having a greater impact on businesses, and therefore on the competitiveness of national economies, than concerns about greenhouse emissions and socioeconomic disparities.
“From an economic point of view, the pandemic seems to be over. The big worry is inflation, at least in Europe,” said Prof Arturo Bris, director of the IMD WCC.
“Globally speaking, those challenges having the biggest impact on the competitiveness of nations, to a greater or lesser degree, include differing national policies to address Covid (a ‘zero-tolerance Covid’ policy versus a ‘moving on from Covid’ one) and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia,” added WCC chief economist Christos Cabolis.
Croatia was this year’s greatest improver, leaping 18 places in economic performance. The WCC said its strong economic rebound from the most acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic played a key part, as did the recovery of its tourism sector.
Many survey-based indicators assessing business practices and confidence in Croatia displayed progress too, highlighting a general increase in business confidence in the country. The WCC said they believed the Balkan country’s upcoming accession to the euro zone in 2023 may be behind this.
Russia and Ukraine were not assessed in this year’s edition due to the limited reliability of data collected.
avinash@gdnmedia.com
Source: https://www.gdnonline.com/Details/1115106/Ranking-first-for-Bahrain
