Jordan Times
Friday, October 15, 2004
Jordan takes 34th rank on
WEF's Global Competitiveness Report
By Rami Abdelrahman
AMMAN — Jordan ranked 35th among 104 countries surveyed in the World Economic
Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2004-2005.
Jordan's Growth Competitiveness Index ranking regressed by from the 34 place in
2003, due to the addition of three new surveyed countries in the index.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which scored 16th in its first appearance in the
index, joined Bahrain in preceding Jordan on the list.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the growth competitiveness index,
which assesses the public and private sector global competitiveness, is composed
of three component indexes: The technology index, the public institutions index
and the macroeconomic environment index, which are calculated on the basis of
both “hard data” or statistics, and “survey data.”
According to Naseem Rahahleh of the competitiveness unit at the Ministry of
Planning and International Cooperation, the ministry distributes surveys to
public and private sector professionals who assess the country's competitiveness
and return it to the WEF, which gathers the information and publishes the final
result in its report.
On the other hand, Jordan's business competitiveness rank reached 43 during
2004, in comparison to 40 in 2003, indicating it has the third most competitive
business climate country in the Arab world after the UAE (rank 28) and Bahrain
(rank 40).
“This year's Global Competitiveness Report appears at a crossroads in the
evolution of the global economy, when the strength of the economic recovery has
left many observers pleasantly surprised,” president and founder of the WEF,
Professor Klaus Schwab said in the report.
According to Schwab, industrial production has been expanding quickly, business
confidence and investment growth have been buoyant, and global trade is growing
at rates not seen for a decade.
During 2003, Jordan's macroeconomic index rank was 47 out of 101 countries,
whereas its technology index rank recorded 51. The Kingdom's ICT sector's rank
was 50, whereas its innovation index rank was 57.
Jordan's public institutions index rank recorded 40th in 2003, as a result of
calculating the average of the corruption sub-index (rank 54) and the contracts
and law subindex (rank 27).
Jordan's macroeconomic environment rank recorded 57 in 2003, and contained two
subindexes: Macroeconomic stability (rank 40), and country credit rating (rank
58).
Other indexes include the microeconomic competitiveness rank (53), which
combines the company operations and strategy (59) and the quality of national
business environment rank (48). Jordan's networked readiness index rank recorded
(51). The subindexes for 2004-2005 should be available, once the report is fully
distributed across the world.