Brass hats & mortar-boards-II : Cowasjee Corner; 09 January, 2005

Brass hats & mortar-boards-II

DAWN - Cowasjee Corner; 09 January, 2005

There is yet more depressing news. The Swiss-based World Economic Forum (WEF) has recently issued its Global Competitiveness Report for 2004-2005 evaluating and ranking 104 countries. It has been compiled by Michael Porter of Harvard University, Klaus Schwab of the WEF, Xavier Sala-i-Martin of Columbia University and Augusto Lapez-Claros of the WEF.

The report is broken up into various sections. Under the heading 'Technological readiness', India is listed at 26 with Korea and Luxembourg above it and Panama and Malaysia beneath. Pakistan comes in at 84 sandwiched between Gambia and Nigeria on top and Ukraine and Mali below.

'Firm-level technology absorption' has India at 18, with Norway and New Zealand above and Austria and the Slovak Republic below. Pakistan is listed at 44, under the Czech Republic and Bahrain and over Namibia and Jordan.

'Prevalence of foreign technology licensing' lists India at 8, with New Zealand and Japan above and the United Arab Emirates and Germany below. At 67, Pakistan lies between Tanzania and Nigeria and Costa Rica and Venezuela.

Under 'FDI and technology transfer' India lies at 20 below Kenya and the United Kingdom and above Luxembourg and South Africa. We are at 96, between Ecuador and Mali and Ukraine and Macedonia.

'Quality of scientific research readiness' has India at 17, below France and Norway, and above New Zealand and the Russian Federation. We lie at 94, below Bangladesh and Vietnam and above Peru and Ecuador.

Under 'Company spending on research and development', India is listed at 26, with South Africa and Ireland above and China and Indonesia below. We enter at 101, between Bolivia and Paraguay and Angola and Chad. The last listed under this heading is Ethiopia at 104.

India tops the list at No.1 under 'Availability of scientists and engineers' with Finland at 2 and Israel at 3, while Pakistan lies in the second half at 61 with Slovenia and Bangladesh above and Ghana and Croatia below.

Depressing also was a report in the press last week from Khalid Hasan in Washington on the subject of the annual 'index of economic freedom' exercise conducted by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal. Pakistan is included among 10 of the 155 countries surveyed whose performance 'worsened' during 2004. It is now bracketed with Ethiopia, Uganda, Haiti, Bangladesh, Morocco, Qatar, Cuba and Tunisia. Pakistan is listed at 133, and India at 118.

Are we destined forever to be just hovering above the bottom of the list?