THE National Economic Consultative Forum (NECF) will tomorrow launch a National Competitiveness Report (NCR) which is critical in enabling the country’s economic actors to achieve the robust economic goal of 7% growth in gross domestic product.
BY TARISAI MANDIZHA
This is the first time that Zimbabwe has done so and will join other countries such as South Africa, Egypt and Senegal who have travelled that path before to improve competitiveness.
Speaking at a media briefing in Harare yesterday, NECF executive secretary Norman Chakanetsa said the report would provide a baseline to understand Zimbabwe’s competitiveness, provide information for policymakers, the basis of attracting foreign direct investment and make a comparative analysis of other countries, among many other things.
“Funding, infrastructure and productivity are some of the issues covered in the report. Also recommended is the need to set up sector-specific discussions to get deeper,” Chakanetsa said.
He said the NCR primarily seeks to make contribution on the ease of doing business and cost drivers.
“In coming up with a NCR, the country recognised the influence of the annual World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index and Doing Business indicators, while at the same time recognising the limitations inherent in their methodologies or abilities to tell a complete story of Zimbabwe,” he said, adding that the NCR would represent a true assessment of Zimbabwe’s economic competitiveness drawing on many global comparable indicators as well as national information.
Speaking at the same event, consultant and vice-president of JE Austin Associates, Martin Webber said: “Questions that we should be asking each other are: So what matters? What comes out of the report? What do we do with the information? How is it going to inform policy? Also think productively about Zimbabwe’s economic sector.”
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Economist Howard Rosen said the process had helped many countries focus policies and improve the living standards of their people.
“Why they started to focus on this, there are two important issues: Every economy wants to raise living standards for its people and this has been a big challenge for many countries as most countries are facing the challenge on how to do that and no country is an island.
“The world has become intensively more competitive, that is, there is much more competition today than ever before in the economy,” Rosen said.
Zimbabwe is ranked uncompetitive by investors due to inflexible policies and delays encountered when one wants to start a new business. According to the World Bank 2015 Doing Business report, Zimbabwe ranked 170 out of 184 economies. On the starting a business indicator, Zimbabwe was ranked 180 out of 189 countries.
