JEDDAH – Three GCC countries were in the top 30 network readiness list globally for the second consecutive year, and another two in the top 40, the 12th annual Global Information Technology Report by INSEAD, the leading international business school, and the World Economic Forum (WEF), said Thursday with the support of Booz & Company and CISCO. The list showed Qatar (23), the United Arab Emirates (25), Bahrain (29), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (31) and Oman (40), demonstrating that they continue to embrace ICT to boost their country's competitiveness. In contrast, countries in the Levant and North Africa still lag behind and face challenges to fully leverage ICT. Jordan ranked (47), Egypt (80), Morocco (89), Lebanon (94) and Algeria (131). The new study, which focused on “Growth and Jobs in a hyper connected World”, assessed the digital ecosystems of 144 developed and developing countries – accounting for more than 98 percent of the world's GDP. By ranking each nation using the Networked Readiness Index (NRI), the study examines how these markets leverage advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) to drive economic productivity and social development. “Overall, the MENA region shows stability, both in rankings and scores. However, the dynamics within the region seem to confirm that regional leaders keep moving ahead: Qatar and the UAE both moved up five ranks, reaching 23rd and 25th rank overall respectively, and Saudi Arabia continued its own move upward (also gaining three ranks, to reach 31st place)”, said Bruno Lanvin, GITR co-editor and Executive Director of INSEAD European Competitiveness Initiative (IECI). “On the other hand however Bahrain (29th) lost two places and Egypt one (80th). Oman, Jordan and Kuwait remained at the same ranks as last year (40th, 47th and 62nd respectively).” Saudi Arabia, in 31st place, goes up three notches in the rankings this year. This rise is driven mainly by a fall in the cost of using ICTs (65th), a strong government effort to expand the amount and quality of available online services (19th), and the creation of an environment in which citizens can increase their participation to support government (22nd). “The government's clear vision of the potential of ICTs to modernize and diversify the local economy (7th) has resulted in a fairly well developed ICT infrastructure (36th) that, together with a business-friendly environment (25th) and despite the still-cumbersome process for starting a business (102nd), provides the right ingredients for properly leveraging ICT and obtaining significant positive economic (42nd) and social (18th) impacts. Moving forward, skills development - by improving the quality of the educational system, especially for math and science (37th), and by boosting educational enrolment, especially at tertiary level (70th) -should become a priority. This would expand the local pool of talent and contribute to the transition toward a less resource-dependent and more knowledge-intensive economy (59th),” said Miguel Lobo, Associate Professor of Decision Sciences, Director of the Abu Dhabi campus. The focus of this year's GITR report is on how digitization can profoundly accelerate the rate of job creation by positively impacting enterprises at multiple functional layers. “As the spread and depth of digitization increases globally, so does its role as a key driver of growth and source of national competitive advantage. Policymakers have focused until now on improving the reach and affordability of ICT services—most recently facilitating, and even investing in, large-scale broadband deployment. Though important, this is just one part of the story, said Bahjat El-Darwiche, Partner at Booz & Company. “Policymakers in the future need to become digital market makers—creators of a digital economy that provides its citizens, enterprises, and economic sectors with the competitive advantage essential to thrive in an increasingly global market.” “Despite the unfavorable economic climate in 2011, digitization (or the mass adoption of digital applications through connected services and devices) added $193 billion boost to world economic output and created 6 million jobs globally”, added Milind Singh, Principal at Booz & Company. “At a regional level, digitization had $16.5 billion impact on the MENA GDP and estimated to have led to the creation of more than 377,000 jobs in the same region in 2011 alone. However, the impact of digitization by country and by sector is uneven. For example, as digitization rises, financial services gain the most in terms of output and productivity. Increased digitization, however, cut jobs in financial services and manufacturing because productivity gains surpassed output gains. Conversely, digitization created jobs in services sub-sectors, with particularly notable gains in the hospitality and retail subsectors.” Becoming a digital market maker requires three undertakings: proactively charting sectoral digitization plans, building enabling capabilities, and jump-starting and monitoring the wider digitization ecosystem. In charting sectoral digitization plans, policymakers should seek to develop competitive advantage and generate jobs in sectors that are already critical to the national economy. Policymakers should then foster the development of capabilities and enablers necessary to achieve these digitization plans. Finally, policymakers should work in concert with industry, consumers, and government agencies to jump-start and continuously monitor an inclusive digitization ecosystem that will encourage the uptake of digital applications in these sectors and that will keep them competitive. — SG
