Romania, more competitive than it seems?

The Romanian economy ranks 23rd among those states and regions with population greater than 20 million, included in a world competitiveness yearbook drawn up by the International Institute for Management of Development (IMD), based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Romania has made it into such a ranking for the first time and is placed above Poland.
IMD’s director of the World Competitiveness project, Stephane Garelli says, “The good news is that the world economy is not in recession. The bad news is that nobody believes it. Out of the 59 countries and regions of the world analysed by the World Competitiveness Yearbook in 2003, only four have seen a contraction of their GDP in 2002.”
The most recent issue of this yearbook shows the most competitive economy last year was that of the United States, which scored 100 points.
The authors of the report rank Romania as 33.6% of the competitiveness of the highest-ranking economy. The ranking of the economies covered in this year’s issue is determined by aggregating over 320 competitiveness criteria grouped into four categories.
The first such category is the macroeconomic performance, which places Romania 26th. The second category, which measures the competitiveness orientation of the economic policies places Romania 24th, while the performance of its enterprises places it 22nd.
The fourth category, i.e. the educational, technical and scientific quality of the human resources in view of meeting the business requirements puts Romania on the 20th place.
In Group I (population greater than 20 million) America is followed by Australia and Canada. As for the EU accession applicant countries, Poland ranks 27th , Turkey ranks 25th and Russia is 26th.
Stephane Garelli anticipates the pressure on a weaker dollar will continue, considering US’ foreign debt is to increase to $3,000bn. “The US economy will become a massive consumer of loans in international markets. As a consequence, it will be harder for developing nations to raise capital because the US economy would drain most of the world’s financial resources.”
In Group II (population less than 20 million), Finland remains in the lead, while Singapore and Denmark come 2nd and 3rd. Out of the countries to join the European Union, Estonia ranks 17th, the Czech Republic ranks 21st, Hungary – 23rd, Slovakia – 27th and Slovenia – 28th.
The World Competitiveness Yearbook was first published in 1989 and rates 59 countries in its current issue. IMD is a top provider of management education worldwide.
The World Economic Forum in its turn draws up a competitiveness ranking. Its most recent issue published in February this year ranks Romania 66th out of 80 countries, down ten places from the previous year. The United States and Finland are on the top two positions in this ranking, as well. razvan.voican@zf.ro