Each year we await the publication of the Global Competitiveness Index, which indicates over a wide range of categories how South Africa is performing vs the rest of the world.
On 3 September the 2014-5 Index was published and we share with you some of its findings concerning South Africa. Once again the trend of being sadly let down by South Africa’s labour regime, primary health and basic education is strongly evident. Contrary to some other very positive performance, these fundamental areas result in a continuing disappointing showing at 56th place out of 144 countries.
The following extract from the report (and particularly those areas we have highlighted) indicates quite clearly where SA needs to improve in order to become more competitive globally, and hence more prosperous as a nation.
“South Africa continues its downward trend and falls to 56th place this year, third among the BRICS economies. South Africa does well on measures of the quality of its institutions (36th), including intellectual property protection (22nd), property rights (20th), the efficiency of its legal framework in challenging and settling disputes (9th and 15th, respectively), and its top-notch auditing (1st) and accountability of private institutions (2nd). Furthermore, South Africa’s financial market development remains impressive at 7th place, although our data point to more difficulties in all channels of obtaining finance this year. The country also has an efficient market for goods and services (32nd), and it does reasonably well in more complex areas such as business sophistication (31st) and innovation (43rd), benefitting from good scientific research institutions (34th) and strong collaboration between universities and the business sector in innovation (31st). South Africa’s transport infrastructure (32nd) is good by regional standards, although its electricity supply does suffer disruptions (99th). But the country’s strong ties to advanced economies, notably the euro area, has made it more vulnerable to the economic slowdown of those economies. These ties are likely to have contributed to the deterioration of fiscal indicators: its performance in the macroeconomic environment—having dropped sharply in the previous year—remains at 89th. Low scores for the diversion of public funds (96th), the perceived wastefulness of government spending (89th), and a more general lack of public trust in politicians (90th) remain worrisome, and security (95th) continues to be a major area of concern for doing business. Building a skilled labor force and creating sufficient employment also present considerable challenges. The health of the workforce is ranked 132nd out of 144 economies—as a result of high rates of communicable diseases and poor health indicators more generally. Higher education and training remains insufficient (86th) and labor market efficiency (113th) is affected by extremely rigid hiring and firing practices (143rd), wage inflexibility (139th), and continuing significant tensions in labor-employer relations (144th). Raising education standards and making its labor market more efficient will thus be critical in view of the country’s high unemployment rate of over 20 percent, with its youth unemployment rate estimated at over 50 percent.”