For about two decades The World Economic Forum has been trying to investigate the question of why some countries are able to grow on a sustained basis for a long period of time, in the process pulling large segments of the population out of poverty, while others remain stagnant or, worse, actually show an erosion of living standards. Through its flagship publication, The Global Competitiveness Report (GCR), The World Economic Forum has led the way in assessing the competitiveness of nations.
Using data on competitiveness collected in 104 economies The World Economic Forum’s GCR, based on modern theories on economic development and competitiveness developed by World leading scientists including Michael Porter, presents results by ranking the countries in The Growth Competitiveness Index as well as The Business Competitiveness Index. Respectively these indices characterize the macro and microeconomic environment. Further, the GCR also contains a section with detailed country profiles for each investigated economy.
For five years SSE Russia, as part of a multinational team, has been collecting data for The World Economic Forum’s GCR in Saint Petersburg.
Over this period Russia has made some progress in its development, but still it ranks 70th out of 104 in The Growth Competitiveness Index ranking (macroeconomic development) and 61st rank out of 103 in The Business Competitiveness Index (in microeconomic development).
The Growth Competitiveness Index in turn can be broken down into three sub-indices Technology Index, Public Institutions Index, and Macroeconomic Environment Index. The values for these indices for the year of 2004 for Russia, released in the GCR, are:
| Technology Index |
67 |
| Public Institutions Index |
89 |
| Macroeconomic Environment Index |
56 |
This means that according to The World Economic Forum information Russia stands quite well in terms of its macroeconomic environment, while it is very weak on development of its public institutions. The macroeconomic environment achievements that Russia attained during the last two or three years are as follows:
- Fiscal improvement due to:
- substantial gains in the terms of trade since early 1999
- cautious fiscal management
- improvements in tax collection, tax system, and tax legislation
- High national savings rate
- Strong external position.
Among other questions that were put to the GCR respondents was a section on evaluating the biggest barriers that keep business from growing fast.
From a list of 14 problematic factors, respondents were asked to select the five most significant for doing business in their country and rank them between 1 (most problematic) and 5 (least problematic). The bars in the figure show the responses weighted according to their ranking for Russia.
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