Friday 19 / April / 2024
Muscat: Experts will analyse Oman's performance in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2018, and suggest recommendations to respective agencies, authorities in the Sultanate have said.
A meeting to discuss Oman's scores in the report 2018 was held at the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) recently. All in all, 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.
An official at Oman’s National Office of Competitiveness (formerly a committee) 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 explained 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. This is 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, namely infrastructure, information and communication technology adoption, macroeconomic stability, health, skills, product market, labor market, financial system, market size, business dynamism, and innovation capacity.”
In some indicators, Oman scored remarkably well. According to the report, in a count of “Terrorism incidents, Oman scored first place, shared with 24 other countries with no terrorism cases recorded. It 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% annual change. In this case, a stable or non-existent inflation rate is considered bad for the economy." This was also true for road quality, in which Oman was 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 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 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. Seven countries scored first place in that indicator.
Oman’s mean number of schooling years is 9.6 years, placing it at 68/140 place. Finland gained first place.
Finally, Oman’s current healthy life expectancy (not total life expectancy) was measured at 66.2 years, placing the country in 64th place. Four countries gained first place.
