Brunei's Local News - Brudirect.com

Bandar Seri Begawan - Brunei entered the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) for 2007-2008 at position 39 out of 134 countries. It is Brunei's first year in the GCI.

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 organisations) in the countries covered by the 'report.

The report listed Brunei to have 80 disadvantages and 32 advantages which contributed to their rank.

The disadvantages among private and public institutions include the following areas: property rights, intellectual property protection, burden of government regulation, corporate ethics and

accountability.

The advantages of competitiveness in Brunei in the public institutions include: diversion of public funds, public trust of politicians and transparency of policy making. There were no advantages in private institutions listed.

There were three out of seven advantages listed in relation to infrastructure of the country which contributed to the ranking, including quality of air transport, port and road infrastructure.

However overall quality of electric supply, telephone lines and overall infrastructure was listed as a disadvantage.

From the viewpoint of macroeconomic stability, Brunei had four out of five advantages, including government surplus/deficit, national savings rate, inflation and government debt. The only disadvantage listed was the interest rate spread.

The WEF ranked Brunei's domestic size at a disadvanuig,. along with the foreign market size. Sub-indexes in innovation, sophistication of firms' operations and strategy and networks and supporting industries, were all listed as disadvantages.

Singapore, at 5th place is the top-rank country for an Asian country on the strength of its institutional environment, moving up two places from last year as a result of a strengthening across all aspects of the institutional framework. Singapore was also placed among the top two countries for the efficiency of all its markets, goods, labour and financial, ensuring the proper allocation of these factors to their best use. But Singapore's overall ranking is constrained by its domestic market size and mixed performance in the macroeconomic stability pillar where it ranks 59th and 121st for its interest rate spread and government debt, respectively.

Other Southeast Asian countries ranked above Brunei include Malaysia at 21st place for benefits from the excellent functioning of its goods, labour and especially financial markets. Thailand is ranked 34 and has fallen six places from last year due to the political turmoil experienced over the past year which can be traced in part to a weakening assessment of government institutions with increasing concerns about the transparency of policy-making and public sector efficiency.

The Global Competitiveness Reports main competitiveness ranking is the GCE developed for the World Economic Forum by Xavier Sala-i-Martin, a professor of economics at Columbia University, and originally 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. -- Courtesy of The Brunei Times