Brian Benza
10 October 2008
Botswana's economic competitiveness has improved on the back of strong macro-economic stability, good quality institutions and infrastructure as well as financial market sophistication, a report released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Geneva, Switzerland reveals.
According to the report, which uses the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) as its barometer for the rankings, Botswana has gone up 20 places to position 56 from a list of 134 countries.
Delivering the keynote address at the launch of the report at the Gaborone International Convention Centre (GICC) on Wednesday, the CEO of the Citizen Empowerment Development Agency (CEDA) Dr Thapelo Matsheka said although the marked improvement in Botswana's ranking is a cause for celebration, Botswana still has a long way to go to achieve satisfactory rankings.
"Coming from position 76 last year to 56 (this year) is quite a remarkable achievement," Matsheka said. "However, I should be quick to advise for muted celebrations as we are still not high enough to relax.
"As a nation, we have received a lot of positive rankings in the past few years, but at times we have not been too kind to those that show our weaknesses. The 2008/09 competitiveness report gives us an opportunity to introspect and reflect on our strengths and weaknesses.
The important lesson to learn from these rankings is how to react to areas where we are falling short." The report, which is a reflection of a survey of opinions solicited from the country's captains of industry, says Botswana's major strengths are in the pillars of institutions, macroeconomic stability, infrastructure, financial market sophistication and labour market efficiency where rankings of 36, 22, 52, 40 and 52 were accrued from 134 countries.
On the other end, Botswana's worst rankings were in the business sophistication (106), market size (101) and health and primary education (112) categories.
Giving a breakdown of the report, a consultant with the Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC), David Matlhape, said Botswana's most problematic factors for doing business included a poor work ethic in the labour force, an inadequately educated workforce and as well as an inefficient government bureaucracy."Although there has been improvement in the health and primary education category due to the introduction of ARVs which have reduced the (HIV/Aids) pandemic's impact on business, more needs to be done as other countries continue to do better than us," Matlhape said.
"Another big challenge that we are facing is in technological readiness as people have either been reluctant or cannot afford to use technological services such as the Internet in doing business."Market size is another area where we are still lacking, and although there is not much we can do to improve our domestic market size, there is always room for improvement in the foreign market through export promotion."
Matlhape added that although Botswana rankings have improved, there are opportunities for more improvement in the areas where the country is lagging behind.
He cited examples such as intensifying the battle against HIV/Aids, more impetus on technological readiness through the recently established Innovation Hub and the coming of the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST).
In the SADC region, coming from the third position in the 2007/08 ranking, Botswana is ranked second after South Africa, replacing Mauritius. But despite on-going battering of its economy by the global financial crisis it mainly caused, the US tops overall rankings.
Switzerland is in second position, followed by Denmark, Sweden and Singapore.In a press release from the WEF, co-author of the report Professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin from Columbia University in the US, said rising food and energy prices, a major international financial crisis and the related slowdown in the world's leading economies are confronting policy makers with new economic management challenges.
"Today's volatility underscores the importance of a competitiveness-supporting economic environment that can help national economies to weather these types of shocks in order to ensure solid economic performance going into the future," he said
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