Global competitiveness index ranking: To rejoice or not?

While India has jumped up 16 spots, Pakistan's ranking on Global Competitiveness Index 2016-17 have remained within the bottom 20 of the 138 countries, and the last in South Asia. Though the country's ranking has improved four notches vis-a-vis 2015-16 (122/138 in 2016-17 versus 126/140 in 2015-16), its score is still below the 2007 level. Compared to Pakistan, India ranked at 39th position in terms of GCI, Bangladesh at 106th and Sri Lanka at 71st position.

Global Competitiveness Index aims to serve as a neutral and objective tool for governments, the private sector, and civil society to work together on effective public-private collaboration to boost future prosperity.

Despite ranking improvements in Pakistan, the 2016-17 report highlights that largely due to deteriorating situation in Pakistan, the gap in some of the drivers of competitiveness between the best and worst performing economies in South Asia has increased continuously since 2007.

Its ironic, especially at a time when the government is proclaiming investment in all sorts of infrastructure, that quality of infrastructure has improved significantly (although from low levels) in India, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh, while it has deteriorated in Pakistan and Nepal as per the latest study. Also, Pakistan is declared the only economy in South Asia that fails to improve its macroeconomic environment and health and primary education levels in tandem with its peers.

GCI Report has also classified the most problematic factors of doing business in Pakistan where corruption leads the pack of 16 key factors, followed by crime and theft, tax rates, access to finance and government instability (see illustration).

However, the country's climb on the 122nd rung of GDI ladder has come from improvements in a couple of areas.

One key improvement that has helped Pakistan pull up its global annual ranking is some recovery on the economic front, where the country has been successful in improving its macroeconomic framework.

Also, the performance of some of the key regulatory bodies and government institutions have shown progress as well, like that of NEPRA, but the alarming nosedive of SEC's ranking that has fallen from 51 in 2014 to 106 this year is something that dilutes the progress made by the key regulatory bodies.