Astana, 3rd June: Kazakhstan has been acknowledged as one of the most competitive countries at the post-Soviet space, says Dina Shazhenova, Executive Secretary of Kazakh Ministry of Economy & Budget Planning.
“In this year’s rating Kazakhstan is ahead of such states as Turkey (ranked 47th), Brazil (ranked 40th), Mexico and Russia (joint 51st position)” said Ms Shazhenova.
The World Competitiveness Center at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland, has compared performances of the 57 most competitive countries in the world and ranked their economies from the most to the least competitive. Kazakhstan has been ranked 36th: this is a whole three positions up from the previous year despite the on-going financial crisis across the globe.
IMD’s definition of competitiveness is based upon “how nations and businesses are managing the totality of their competencies to achieve greater prosperity”. Competitiveness is not just about growth or economic performance, but also take into consideration the “soft factors” of competitiveness, such as the environment, quality of life, technology, knowledge, etc.. It is also about how countries can resist adversity and show resilience to weather storms.
For this competitiveness analysis IMD used more than 25 thousand indicators.
And when putting together the ratings it took into consideration four main criteria:
· general condition of the economy
· efficiency of the government
· efficiency of business
· condition of infrastructure.
In addition to collecting statistic data, Swiss researchers and their Kazakh colleagues from the Institute of Economics under the Ministry of Economy & Budget Planning held a poll at 119 Kazakh companies (most of these were subsidiaries of national holdings). Results of this research formed the basis for the eventual rating.
