The World Economic Forum released this week “The Global Competitiveness Report 2019”, which aims to evaluate and initiate new tools to growth and prosperity. In details, the report provides a ranking for 141 countries across the globe based on their Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), which by definition “measures national competitiveness, defined as the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity”. More specifically, the GCI takes into account twelve pillars of competitiveness covering 103 indicators that mirror the magnitude and complexity of the factors of productivity and competitiveness environment. The GCI introduced in 2018 a scoring system for each indicator ranging between 0 and 100. The pillars of the index include: institutions, infrastructure, ICT Adoption, macroeconomic stability, health, skills, product market, labour market, financial system, market size, business dynamism, and innovation capability. The pillars are also organized into four overarching components, namely “Enabling Environment”, “Human Capital”, “Markets” and “Innovation Ecosystem”. According to the report, Singapore emerged as the most competitive country in the world with a GCI score of 84.8. The United States came in 2^nd in the world with a GCI score of 83.7, followed by Hong Kong (global rank: 3, GCI score: 83.1), the Netherlands (global rank: 4, GCI score: 82.4) and Switzerland (global rank: 5, GCI score: 82.3) among others.

On a regional basis, the U.A.E. topped its peers in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, ranking 25^th in the world with a GCI score of 75.0, followed by Qatar (global rank: 29, GCI score: 72.9), Saudi Arabia (global rank: 36, GCI score: 70.0) and Bahrain (global rank: 45, GCI score: 65.4) only to name a few. On the local front, Lebanon came in 88^th in the world in the Global Competitiveness Index, down from the 80^th place a year earlier with a GCI score of 56.3. Furthermore, Lebanon ranked 10^th in the MENA region faring better than Algeria (global rank: 89, GCI score: 56.3), Egypt (global rank: 93, GCI score: 54.5), Iran (global rank: 99, GCI score: 53.0), and Yemen (global rank: 140, GCI score: 35.5). In details, and under the “Enabling Environment” overarching component, Lebanon scored 44.4 on the institutions front (113^th place), 61.3 on the infrastructure front (89^th place), 46.7 on the ICT adoption front (95^th place) and 66.5 on the macroeconomic stability front (121^st place).