The New Zealand Economy
Global competitive report released
08 Sep 2009
New Zealand has scored 20th in the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness ranking, moving slightly ahead of Malaysia, Ireland, Iceland and Israel.
The global competitiveness index measures the institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country. Productivity in turn is the key determinant of the level of prosperity.
As in prior surveys, New Zealand has scored very well on the quality of our Institutions and our Health and Primary Education. We have improved our score on Infrastructure but it remains a relative weakness.
The prosperity of developed countries depends strongly on factors the World Economic Forum calls Business Sophistication and Innovation. New Zealand scores relatively poorly on Business Sophistication, with a ranking of 34th. The drivers of our relatively poor performance are all partly affected by our small size and remote location; our business have relatively few suppliers, we do not have well-developed clusters of businesses, and our businesses do not participate in many steps of their value chains.
The New Zealand Institute Director, Dr Rick Boven, observes that: “efforts to improve the connectedness of our businesses, locally and internationally, would improve our ranking”.
New Zealand also scores relatively poorly on Innovation, with a rank of 23rd. The quality of our scientific research institutions is high, but we are held back by low availability of scientists and engineers and by low company spending on research and development. Efforts to lift the performance of the science sector and to gain more commercial benefits from science would help lift New Zealand’s innovation performance.
Switzerland has overtaken the USA to be the competitiveness leader. Singapore is third, followed by Sweden and Denmark.
For more information please contact:
Dr Rick Boven, Director, The New Zealand Institute, Ph: (09) 309 6230
Email: , Web site: http://www.nzinstitute.org
About the Global Competitiveness Report
The rankings are calculated from both publicly available data and the Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the World Economic Forum together with its network of Partner Institutes (leading research institutes and business organizations) in the countries covered by the Report. This year, over 13,000 business leaders were polled in 133 economies. The survey is designed to capture a broad range of factors affecting an economy’s business climate. The Report also includes comprehensive listings of the main strengths and weaknesses of countries, making it possible to identify key priorities for policy reform.
The Global Competitiveness Report’s competitiveness ranking is based on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), developed for the World Economic Forum by Sala-i-Martin and introduced in 2004. The GCI is based on 12 pillars of competitiveness, providing a comprehensive picture of the competitiveness landscape in countries around the world at all stages of development. The pillars include Institutions, Infrastructure, Macroeconomic Stability, Health and Primary Education, Higher Education and Training, Goods Market Efficiency, Labour Market Efficiency, Financial Market Sophistication, Technological Readiness, Market Size, Business Sophistication, and Innovation.
The Report contains a detailed profile for each of the 133 economies featured in the study, providing a comprehensive summary of the overall position in the rankings as well as the most prominent competitive advantages and disadvantages of each country/economy based on the analysis used in computing the rankings.
Also included is an extensive section of data tables with global rankings for over 110 indicators. http://www.weforum.org