Greece Lags Behind In Competitiveness

Greece dropped 12 places in the Global Competi­ti­veness Report 2010-2011, released by the World Economic Forum last month, as it slid from 71st place to 83rd in the global ranking of 139 countries.

According to the report, Greece, which is the lowest ranked country within the European Union, shows a dismal performance in 2010 due to the severe deterioration of its macroeconomic environment adding to a particularly poor institutional setup and low efficiency of markets.

Greece’s decline follows the revision to the government’s fiscal spending numbers, and the ensuing sovereign debt crisis, with the country falling from 103rd to 123rd place in the macroecono­mic environment and also declining by 10 places to 93rd place in measures of financial market development.

The global competitiveness report said that, given the recent turmoil, it is not surprising that the evalu­ation of public institutions has also suffered since last year, as it ranked a low 84th overall.

Another major area of concern is the country’s inefficient labor market (125th), which the report said would make it more difficult to emerge from the crisis, demonstrating the importance of recent efforts to increase the retirement age and increase labor market flexibility.

However, in working to overcome the present difficulties, the report showed that Greece has a number of strengths to build upon, including a reasonably well educated workforce that is adept at adopting new technologies for productivity enhancements.

The World Economic Forum evaluates countries based on data in regards to 12 pillars of economic competitiveness.

Source: World Economic Forum