Barbados has been ranked the 50th most competitive country in the world in a survey of 131 countries, according to the Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum.

The WEF, which has published its Global Competitiveness Index as part of its report since 2004, says it defines competitiveness as “the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country.” That level, it says, determines the sustainable level of prosperity that can be earned by an economy, as well as the rate of return obtainable on investments in the country.

However, in the Caribbean-Latin America area, only Chile (26th) and Puerto Rico (36th) outrank Barbados, with Jamaica coming in at 78th spot and Trinidad & Tobago at 84th. The U.S. is in first place, followed by Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany to round out the top five.

In the case of Barbados, the top five “most problematic factors for doing business” were topped by “poor work ethic in national labour force” which received 17.5 points; followed by “inefficient government bureaucracy” with 14.6; “foreign currency regulations” with 12.9; “access to financing” with 11.8 points; and “tax rates” with 10.6. Also scoring high on the negative list were “inflation” with 8.4 points and “restrictive labour regulations” with 7.1. Other annoyances to doing business cited, each with under five negative points, were “tax regulations”, “inadequate supply of infrastructure”, “crime and theft”, “inadequate supply of infrastructure”, “policy instability”, “corruption”, and “government instabilty/coups” (which ranked last scoring less than half a negative point.

The report puts Barbados’ GDP for 2006 at US$3.4 billion, and its share of the word’s total GDP for that year at one hundredth of one percent (0.01).

Ready for the Internet

Meantime, Barbados now ranks 38th out of 127 countries in the Networked Readiness Index 2008 compiled by the Global Information Technology Report, up two spots from its 2007 ranking of 40th. Barbados’ performance is second only to Chile’s in the whole of the Latin American area, in which the report includes the Caribbean. Puerto Rico follows in 39th place, Jamaica in 46th and Trinidad & Tobago in 82nd. The OECS countries were not included in the survey.

Barbados, says the report, “is an interesting case of networked readiness driven mainly by its citizens...and by an ICT-conducive regulatory framework (ranked 27th) and infrastructure (ranked 19th).” However, note the authors, “the relative degree of prioritization of ICT in the government agenda has failed so far to translate into higher levels of government usage,” as Barbados came 87th in this category.

Barbados’ position was announced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) at an event sponsored by Microsoft at the Hilton Barbados recently to review the findings of the latest edition of the Global Information Technology Report.

The NRI sets out an international framework by which the performance of a large number of economies can be rated over time, allowing for relative competitive advantages and weaknesses to be identified for each country. In other words, the idea is to show governments how well their countries are performing in ICT readiness compared to other countries so that they can take action to compete better in the future.

According to the report, information and communication technologies (ICT) can help a country to become more competitive by making its production processes more efficient. It can also speed up the growth of knowledge-based industries and empower people by giving them access to much wider sources of information and markets than they previously had.
In fact, says the report in an article written by Ms. Mia of and Soumitra Dutta of INSEAD, one of the world’s leading business schools, “ICT has been found to have a noteworthy impact on economic performance,” and to help a country increase productivity.

Meanwhile, Denmark and Sweden continue to lead the world in networked readiness, says the report, noting that “the two countries share a similar emphasis on education and innovation as well as a coherent vision of their respective governments on the importance of ICT for enhancing overall competitiveness.”