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East Asian Economies Top the Global Enabling Trade Report 2009

East Asian economies – Singapore and Hong Kong SAR – occupy the top two positions in the Enabling Trade Index ranking, followed by Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden, according to the the World Economic Forum's Global Enabling Trade Report 2009. Canada, Norway, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands complete the top-10 list. The results mirror the openness of Singapore and Hong Kong SAR to international trade and investment as part of their successful economic development strategy.

Both economies have put into place highly efficient border administrations and supportive business environments. They are endowed with well-developed transport and telecommunications infrastructures ensuring rapid transit to final destination. These attributes are further supported by business environments that are conducive to trade.

The United States benefits from a conducive business environment, as well as excellent infrastructure. The US position is weakened by restricted access to markets and concerns about costs to business resulting from crime, violence and terrorism. China performs well with respect to transport services and has swift import-export procedures, but trade development is held back by highly restricted access to its markets.

The Global Enabling Trade Report 2009 is launched at a crucial time for global trade, as overall economic activity declines, trade volumes drop and public authorities adopt counter-cyclical stimulus policies and institutional reforms. The report serves as a timely reminder of the risks of protectionism and of the widespread prosperity and poverty reduction associated with the expansion of international trade in the years leading up to 2008.

Watch interviews with the authors below and download the full report here: http://tr.im/getr09

Key Strengths & Weaknesses of Mexico's Competitiveness

The World Economic Forum’s Mexico Competitiveness Report 2009 is the first-ever study of this type for Mexico. Using the Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index’s methodology and the latest thinking in competitiveness research, The Mexico Competitiveness Report 2009 provides a comprehensive overview of the country’s current competitiveness landscape, highlighting strengths and problematic areas.

Ranked 60th in the Global Competitiveness Index 2008-2009, Mexico presents important strengths in its market size, sophisticated business sector and diversified production structure, as well as in its sound macroeconomics fundamentals. However, a number of weaknesses remain in the quality of institutions, goods and labour markets, education standards and its innovation potential.

Closing the Global Gender Gap

Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the rankings in the latest Global Gender Gap Report. All countries in the top 20 made progress relative to their scores last year – some more so than others. Latvia (13) and Lithuania (14) made the biggest advances among the top 20, gaining six and seven places respectively, driven by smaller gender gaps in labour force participation and wages. The Report covers a total of 128 countries, representing over 90% of the world’s population.

Click on the links in the right hand column to learn more about the Report; the rankings (PDF I Excel); country profiles; photos and the press release.

Denmark tops World Economic Forum Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007 rankings for the first time

Denmark tops the rankings of The Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007 's "Networked Readiness Index", as a culmination of an upward trend since 2003. Sweden, Singapore and Finland follow, while the United States loses ground in networked readiness, falling 6 places to 7th position. With record coverage of 122 economies, the GITR has become the world’s most respected assessment of the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations.

Watch video interviews with the Report authors and read more here!

How does your country perform in the rankings? How important is ICT to your life?

challenging paradigms

Related to the previous blog posted on the late 19^th Century migration, it appears that

Australia

is one of the few countries that more or less maintain a model of migration consistent with those days. They allow a controlled amount of unskilled-labor immigration, and contrary to what could be expected by European policy setters, unemployment of the local population is lowered. I actually thing the

US

accomplishes a similar feat via significant illegal unskilled labor immigration.

Paradigm to question: Countries should first find jobs for their locals before allowing immigration.

Another key problem seems to be that people skills do not match job skills. On the job training has to start playing a bigger role. On the job training and investment in people has played a much bigger role a few decades back, but it seems that the increased mobility of people and the focus on tradable skills have made the economics of investment in people poor in many cases. I’ll use a very brief economics term here, not critical, there appears to be a Nash Equilibrium in people investment. Since you cannot hold to your investment, it is better not to invest, at the end everybody ends up acting in the same way.

Singapore

’s approach to this problem is to make training mandatory.

Singapore

taxes 1% on all payrolls and makes training mandatory. I think even on countries where this type of approach could not be met, it is still clear that mutual and coordinated investment in training by a majority of the market participants.

Crazy ideas:

Put a tax of 1% on payrolls for all employees in the world and invest most of the money in training and a small portion should go to the institution that trained and educated that person, in whatever country tha may be (this could solve some of the Brain –Drain problems of the Philippines and South Africa with their medical personnel etc. )

In the same way that Supply Chain theory has been coping with ever more fluctuating demand by trying to customize products the closest to the consumer, we should take a similar approach on innovation for Education and Training. We need a new set of basic skills that allows for later stage customization according to market needs.

First Challenges identified

The big debate has finally begun around the theme of regional identities and struggles and the first conversations identifying the key challenges have begun to take place in small intimate groups, discussion panels and in the big townhall debate.

The first day of the 2006 Annual Meeting was dedicated to identify the key challenges for each of the major themes of this year's event.

With regards to regional identities and struggles , the main challenges identified, with potential global impact, that face the five major world regions over the coming 12-18 months were:

1. Institution and Governance:  Pushing through the reform agenda, democratization, transparency and building a sense of regional identity and community.  The new “conservative” wave of political leadership. 
2. Security: Taming social unrest through integration, militarization of rouge states and the development of a new breed of terrorism
3. Economics: The long oil boom and the repercussion on global economy. The winners and the loosers, Market reforms
4. Development Struggle: new models of the welfare state for the 21^st century, reform of the labour market and changing balance of demographic population of nations ( local vs immigrants),

Key regional questions that need to be addresssed in the next 12-18 months the most pressing ones identified were:

In terms of k

1. Europe:  How can the European Union clearly define the region’s priorities to ensure that the European Union can work.  Solving the key governance and leadership issue are key to ensuring the ecomomic development of the region in face of a european identity crises

2. Middle East: How can governments in the middle east ensure that their elections are not simply “window dressing” exercises benefiting simply national elites?  How can the long oil boom ensure regional development and stabilty. 

3. Latin America: How can, or will, the new regional political alliances arising from the coming to power of conservative goverments make sure that the market the reforms accomplished thus far are continued?

4. Africa: How can african governments keep the reform agenda moving forward to ensure good public and corporate governance practices become wide spread and they create the structures necessary for strong intra-regional trade aimed at  economic development.

The real question however is what are the mechanisms for change that each region needs to adopt  in order to provide concrete solutions to the key challenges identified?  Are interntational bodies or umbrella organisations going to be able to provide the answers or are the transformations needed only able to be done at a local level?   

Global economic imbalances...

Hi everyone,

I look forward to our interaction and discussions.

As part of the Global Leadership Program in the Forum I am working on Latin America now. My background spans from some years in the Central Bank of Mexico, some  Structured Finance in Emerging Markets to some enterpreneurial experiences...

Best regards,

Emilio Lozoya

Welcome to Economic Imbalances Action Group

Welcome to the World Economic Forum Action Group Blog.

The action group on Economic Imbalances, formed in our Annual Meeting 2006, focuses on the imbalances (and possible shocks) that are affecting global economic conditions -- from fiscal imbalances to the US current account deficit, from "bubbles" to energy prices.

The objective of these blogs is to enable Action Group members to exchange ideas and comments on this topic during the Annual Meeting. But it is open also to other readers, whose comments will be very appreciated! So blog away...

To Action Group 2 members: when posting a blog, please always sign your name so other bloggers know which member of the AG is the author. Also, please always chose the category "Action Group 2" when posting, so the blog is filed and easier to find later on (we don't want good ideas to be lost).

After the Annual Meeting, the blog will become a key mode of communication between AG members throughout the year.

Thanks, and we look forward to your posts!

Ilaria Frau
Global Leadership Fellow
Business Insight
&
Emilio Lozoya
Global Leadership Fellow
Latin America

Welcome to Action Group 5

Welcome to the World Economic Forum Action Group Blog.  This action group, formed in our Annual Meeting 2006 focuses on job creation.

Some of the critical questions we are trying to address in this blog are:

Where and how will the jobs of the future be?
Will the majority of people benefit from the rise in wealth or will there increasingly be winners and losers? Will the winners and losers be within one country or will there be countries and even regions that will end up losers in terms of jobs and employment?
How to deal with the growing gap between workers' skills and skills demanded by companies?How to increase workers mobility and bring people to where the jobs are?
How can the public and private sector cooperate to create jobs?
And so on, questions related to Talent War, outsourcing and its impact on jobs and society, the new challenges to education...

Please enter any relevant messages regarding this theme so we gather and sift through information as we go through our Annual Meeting and also beyond. Please ensure you sign your name after each comment so we can attribute good ideas later. Looking forward to a lively discussion Max

Nordic countries and East Asian tigers top 2005 competitiveness rankings

Finland remains the most competitive economy in the world and tops the rankings for the third consecutive year in The Global Competitiveness Report 2005-2006, released today by the World Economic Forum. The US is in second position, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Taiwan and Singapore, respectively.

"The Nordic countries share a number of characteristics that make them extremely competitive, such as very healthy macroeconomic environments and public institutions that are highly transparent and efficient, with general agreement within society on the spending priorities to be met in the government budget. While the business communities in the Nordic countries point to high tax rates as a potential problem area, there is no evidence that these are adversely affecting the ability of these countries to compete effectively in world markets, or to provide to their respective populations some of the highest standards of living in the world. Indeed, the high levels of government tax revenue have delivered world-class educational establishments, an extensive safety net, and a highly motivated and skilled labour force," said Augusto Lopez-Claros, Chief Economist and Director of the Forum's Global Competitiveness Programme.

For more information, visit the World Economic Forum's website:

Global Competitiveness Report

Press release

Video interviews with the report's authors

Full rankings