Botswana improves on technology ranking
Keikantse Lesemela | Friday September 12, 2014 13:57
The country is ranked 76 out of 144 countries, a major improvement from position 104th recorded last year.
Briefing the media about the country’s performance on Wednesday, Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC) executive director, Baeti Molake noted that the improvement arose out of international organisations concerns about insufficient data in the websites.
“This is a significant improvement that we have to celebrate because we have been accused of providing international organisations with insufficient data. We have now improved from 104 last year to 76 this year,” said Molake.
He explained that out of the 12 pillars, Botswana has improved in four, which include macroeconomic environment, labour market efficiency, market size ranking 97 moving from 101, and technological readiness.
The technological readiness pillar measures the agility with which an economy adopts existing technologies to enhance the productivity of its industries, with specific emphasis on its capacity to leverage Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in daily activities and production processes for increased efficiency and enabling innovation for competitiveness.
However, the country’s overall performance in the Global Competitiveness Index maintained the 74th position. Among the country’s strengths are relatively reliable and transparent institutions ranked at the 39th position with efficient government spending and low levels of corruption as well as its sound macroeconomic environment based on balanced fiscal budgets.
Molake said Botswana is not doing well in business sophistication as it dropped from position 124 to 130 and score dropped from 3.7 to 3.5. He said the decline is caused by poor service by local businesses.
“Most businesses do not value customers so this affects the country’s economic performance. If we have to improve as the country, all business sectors has to be engaged,” he said, adding that out of nine indicators in business sophistication Botswana is ranked below average scores.
He said areas of major concern are the health, primary and higher education and training sectors, particularly as the country transforms to efficiency from factor driven.
Despite the notable improvements, Botswana is still factor driven as evidenced by the low ranking in categories such as market efficiency, infrastructure, business sophistication and innovation.
According to the World Economic Forum, Botswana’s education system presents another area of concern as a middle-income country in transition to becoming an efficiency-driven economy. “Education enrolments remains low at all levels by the international standards and the quality of the education system receives mediocre marks,” Molake said.
The report also states that Botswana’s goods market which is ranked 97th must become more efficient and its infrastructure must be upgraded.