Experts to analyse competitiveness score

Times News Service

MUSCAT: Experts will analyse Oman’s performance in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2018 and suggest recommendations to respective agencies, according to authorities in the Sultanate.

A meeting to discuss Oman’s scores from the Report 2018 was held at the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) recently.

It was noted that Oman came in 47th out of 140 countries in the Global Competitiveness report by the World Economic Forum.

Its best indicator was the infrastructure index at 24/140 and its lowest was innovation, at 86/140.

Regarding the score, an official from Oman’s National Office of Competitiveness said, “These scores will be analysed by us, both for validity and methodology, and in order to speak with related agencies regarding possible recommendations.”

He noted that if one of the scores needs to be changed through the World Economic Forum, for the sake of transparency and reality, the office will do so, regardless of whether the change improves Oman’s scores or not.

According to the NCSI, “The Global Competitiveness Index measures the factors which contribute to the productivity and prosperity of 140 countries around the world based on 12 categories, including infrastructure, information and communication technology adoption, macroeconomic stability, health, skills, product market, labor market, financial system, market size, business dynamism, and innovation capacity.

“On some indicators, Oman scored very well. According to the report, in a count of low numbers of terrorism incidents, Oman scored in first place, shared with 24 other countries with no terrorism cases recorded. It also scored 4th at 6.4/7 for low rates of organized crime.”

Dr Khalifa Al Barwani, Chief Executive of NCSI, also spoke about Oman’s score on the report for its inflation rate, saying, “Oman came in first place with 74 other countries at 1.4 per cent annual change.

In this case, a stable or non-existent inflation rates is considered bad for the economy.” This was also true for road quality, in which Oman placed 8th with a score of 6/7.In this case, a higher road quality was indicated by a higher score, not a lower one.

For other indicators, Oman scored well due to its distribution.

The report indicated that there was an average of 149 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people, putting the country in 14th place globally.

This does not count if 100 per cent of people have cell phone subscriptions, but rather measures the subscriptions per 100 people.

There are also indicators, for which Oman gained lower scores.

Oman registered 0.00 trademark applications per million people in 2018 and gained a ranking of 124/140.