A.P's MoU with WEF to support State in assessing its competitiveness

The Andhra Pradesh State Government signed a memorandum of understanding with the WEF that would enable the State to assess its competitiveness.

In a major boost to the State’s efforts to give accelerated push to the economy, the World Economic Forum has agreed to help the Andhra Pradesh Government to assess the State’s level of competitiveness.

The WEF will, accordingly, utilise benchmarking methods including the global competitiveness index to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the State’s economy. The effort is to leverage the key role played by the data driven and evidence based policy making that in spurring the economic growth.

The State Government signed a memorandum of understanding with the WEF that would enable the State to assess its competitiveness in the presence of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in New Delhi. According to the MoU, the State Government and its partners would assess the competitiveness, both strengths and weaknesses, of the economy using the global competitiveness index.

The assessment was aimed at providing key data for designing evidence-based policies and reforms and it would allow the State to compare its performance with other economies of similar size or those at similar stage of development. The methodology would draw on the GCI which would measure a set of factors and policies that together determine the level of productivity and its ability to prosper.

The assessment would be based on performance in 12 categories: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial sector development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation.

The Chief Minister said collaboration with the WEF would provide the State with methodology, tools and knowledge helping the Government in designing better policies. Identifying and measuring bottlenecks to growth were critical steps for the State in this direction to fulfil its ambitious plans.

WEF managing board member and centre for regional strategies head Philipp Rosler said the forum would share its expertise with key actors in the State’s development and build their capacity to carry out similar exercise for the State which had population of almost five crore.

The Forum would accordingly provide technical support and help in training the government staff on GCI methodology, data collection and interpretation of results. This would, in turn, enable the State Government and its partners to carry out competitiveness assessments independently and on a regular basis.