Egypt moves down 11 places from a year ago to 81st place on the 2010 Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), which ranked 133 countries. The Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011 published Tuesday indicated that Egypt has not achieved any improvements in the areas of infrastructure, health, basic education, higher education and training, market efficiency, technology or innovation. Chairman of the Egyptian National Competitiveness Council (ENCC) Helmy Abouleish attributed the lower ranking to the entry of six new countries in this year's index that were not previously included. He also pointed to the economic recoveries of a number of countries that were hit hard by last year's global financial crisis. Executive Director of the ENCC Dr. Mona al-Baradei said Egypt has a number of reservations regarding the methodology used to prepare the report, and that the ENCC will communicate these reservations to the Global Forum. Al-Baradei said some sub-indices did not accurately reflect the reality of Egypt's economic performance and that these inaccuracies affected the final results of the report. She pointed to Egypt's decline in ranking on the "losses caused by terrorist acts" sub-index--despite the fact that such acts decreased in the past several years. In addition al-Baradei said that "the enrollment rate in primary education sub-index results conflicted with the Ministry of Economic Development's official statements regarding the state's economic and social development plan which indicated that Egypt achieved a net enrolment ratio in primary education of more than 90 percent in Cairo," and she cited the low ranking on "the participation of women in the workforce" sub-index, despite the increased participation of women in both the formal and informal sectors. Countries ranked by the GCI for the first time included Iran, which ranked 69 and Lebanon, which ranked 92 on the report. Abouleish said Egypt has showed a noticeable improvement on a number of sub-indices such as the "availability of scientists", "judicial independence", "domestic and foreign market size," and prevention of "organized crime." Translated from the Arabic Edition.
