Botswana slips in world competitiveness rankings
Lewanika Timothy | Monday June 26, 2023 06:00
This year a total of 64 middle and high-income economies were assessed, in the IMD’s World Competitiveness Yearbook, with only Botswana and South Africa participating from Africa. Though similar to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) more well-known Global Competitive Reports, the IMD assessment provides a more in-depth analysis to guide focused actions.
Botswana signed up for the competitiveness yearbook three years ago, while the WEF’s analysis has been in limbo since 2020.
The IMD’s assessment is conducted by four factors, namely economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure. Two-thirds of the assessment is based on statistical indicators from organisations such as the World Bank and others, while the balance is from opinions sourced from a 92-question survey sent to top and middle-level executives worldwide.
Delivering the findings of the latest report on Tuesday, Letsogile Batsetswe, a research consultant at the Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC), said while the slight drop in rank could be due to the inclusion of Taiwan in this year's yearbook, Botswana’s overall score in the ratings was below par.
“We had a competitiveness score of 45 out of 100 and if it was an exam, and you got 45%, that would be below average,” Batsetswe said. “There’s still a lot that we have to do as a country and in those four factors, we have dropped in a number of them.”
The researchers said as Botswana has a national target of becoming a high-income economy by 2036, it is important that it assesses itself against countries at that level.
“We have to work very hard because that 45% is very low and we have to push so that someday at least we are talking about 70%. “This is how we are ranked against middle- to high-income countries since we are saying we are envisaging to become a high-income country by 2036. “It’s therefore important to assess ourselves against these other countries.”
Across the four factors, Botswana’s worst performance was in the infrastructure category where overall the country was ranked 61st out of the 64 countries assessed. The infrastructure factor assesses the extent to which tangible and intangible assets available in the economy meet the needs of businesses.
Under the infrastructure factor, Botswana was ranked last amongst the 64 nations for life expectancy at birth, mobile broadband subscribers, internet speed and patent applications per capita, the last being an indicator of innovation in the economy. However, in the same factor, Botswana was ranked first in the world for investment in telecommunications and total public expenditure on education.
Under the economic performance factor, which assesses the effectiveness of a country’s macroeconomic environment in promoting competitiveness, the country declined to a global position of 62 compared to 60 in 2022.
Underlying drivers of the economic factor performance include poor performance in sub-factors like international trade with Botswana's performance dropping to position 63 compared to ranking number 57 in 2022.
“We are doing badly in exports of commercial services and are ranked number 64,” Batsetswe said. “We were also ranked 64th out of 64 for export concentration. “However, we were ranked first in government subsidies.”
BNPC officials said the IMD yearbook would be thoroughly analysed and the various stakeholders engaged, to address the competitiveness issues that are being pointed out.