Of these, Mauritius continues its strong upward trajectory of recent years, climbing six places. Despite being in the top half, South Africa declined
three places: it is now the third most competitive BRICS economy after China (28th) and the Russian Federation (53rd). Rwanda seems to be on a growth trajectory by achieving some strong results, climbs four places.
The MENA region, affected by geopolitical instability, the Middle East and North Africa depicts a varied and uneasy scenario of systemic proportions. The United Arab Emirates (12th) grew strongly leading the region and notching up seven places, ahead of Qatar (16th). These performances are in complete contrast to that of their Northern African counterparts, where Morocco is 72nd. Ensuring structural reforms, improving the business environment and strengthening the innovative capacity so as to enable the private sector to grow and create jobs, are of key importance to the region. This has in many countries been achieved, but the lack of credible implementation for broad-based beneficiation lacks through most of Africa.
“The strained global geopolitical situation, the rise of income inequality and the potential tightening of the financial conditions could put the still-tentative recovery at risk and call for structural reforms to ensure more sustainable and inclusive growth,” said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
“Recently we have seen an end to the decoupling between emerging economies and developed countries that characterized the years following the global downturn. Now we see a new kind of decoupling, between high and low growth economies within both emerging and developed worlds. Here, the distinguishing feature for economies that are able to grow rapidly is their ability to attain competitiveness through structural reform”, were the words of Xavier Sala-i-Martin, professor of economics at Columbia University in the US. Depicting the evolution of the global economy and its impact for even strong growth orientated GDP’s. Global economics and performance is almost like a mutating virus – remedying it is becoming more and more challenging.
Proving this point is that many of the world’s largest emerging market economies continue face challenges in improving Competitiveness. These include Saudi Arabia (24th), Turkey (45th), Brazil (57th), Mexico (61st) and India (71st) all fall in the rankings. China (28th), remains the highest ranked BRICS economy.
Ultimately the report establishes that despite years of bold monetary policy, global economic growth remains at risk, as several countries struggle to implement and achieve growth-boosting structural reforms. The report finds that the main obstacle to sustainable global growth is uneven implementation of structural reforms across different regions and levels of development. Proving that down the line, economic merging may be a potential solution.
More than anything, especially for emerging markets and economies, innovation will determine the future of economic sustainability.
No comments:
Post a Comment