You are known by the company you move around and if a novice gets to see the Global Competitiveness Report 2011-12, he or she will end up marking Pakistan somewhere in the North African or Sub Saharan region. Pakistans place in the Global Competiveness Index is 118 out of 142 countries, surrounded by countries such as Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mali. Although Pakistan got an improved ranking of 118 versus 123 that it got in the previous survey, it was effectively an improvement of two places as the sample size increased by five countries. The GCI ranks Pakistan in the first stage of factor driven development which carries higher wieghtage of basic requirements, an area in which Pakistan continues to be consistently poor. Amongst the indicators of basic requirements, macroeconomic indicators stand out as the most worrisome. Although the score has improved considerably compared to the previous year, the performance is far from satisfactory. The macroeconomic performance is more of an objective measure than most others which are based on subjective opinions and perceptions. The usual culprits of health, education and infrastructure requirements either deteriorated or showed no improvement. The hollow show perfectly coincides with the factors that are termed the most problematic for doing business in Pakistan. Political instability, inadequate bureaucracy and inadequate supply of infrastructure are on top of the list of problems. The efficiency of Pakistans labour market continues to be in a dismal state as low labour-employer cooperation, high rigidity of employment and a very low female participation ratio combine to create obstacles in maximising the potential benefits that Pakistan may have given the large population and healthy demographics. It is not all doom and gloom though as the efficiency and innovation measures provide silver linings to Pakistans global competitiveness. A comprehensive analysis of the efficiency index depicts that Pakistans market size is a massive plus for the country with a population of 180 million people. This mammoth number presents tremendous potential and scope for market development and expansion. Pakistan is brimming with potential but sadly that has long been the case without much effort in the direction to effectively tap this potential - the dismal show in effectively managing the labour is a testament to why Pakistan still does so miserably in overall competiveness. Poor standards of higher education and training are other factors that limit the potential to enhance efficiency. Most worrisome is the rate of primary education enrolment which is amongst the lowest in the world - that should be an eye-opener for the policymakers as without education, Pakistan can only dream about achieving the MDG goals or moving up the ladders of the GCI. The GCI report should act as a report card for the government and also provide a road map of the future course of actions. Sadly, this is not the first time that Pakistan has been ranked so low and it is probably not the last time either. given the fact that the government has not paid much heed to prior GCI reports either.
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Pakistans GCI comparative rankings
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2011-12 2010-11
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Rank Score Rank Score
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Sample size 142 139
Global Competitiveness 118 3.6 123 3.5
Basic requirements 130 3.5 132 3.4
Efficiency enhancers 100 3.7 95 3.7
Innovation & sophistication 72 3.4 76 3.4
Macroeconomic environment 138 3.6 133 3.2
Health & primary education 121 4.4 123 4.3
Infrastructure 115 2.8 110 2.8
Labor market efficiency 136 3.5 131 3.5
Market size 30 4.7 31 4.6
Business cost of terrorism 141 3.0 138 NA
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Source: Global Competitiveness Report 2011-12
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