Digital skills, robust safetynet help Covid recovery

Strengths for Covid-time competitiveness

• Countries with digital skills: The Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, Estonia, the United States
• Countries with robust safety nets: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland
• Countries with strong financial system: Finland, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Singapore could more easily provide credit to SMEs to prevent insolvency
• Countries with better policies: Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, the United Arab Emirates
• Countries with epidemic experiences: Republic of Korea, Singapore

Countries with advanced digital economies and digital skills, robust social safety nets and previous experience dealing with epidemics have better managed the impact of the pandemic on their economies and citizens, reveals a World Economic Forum (WEF) report released from Geneva yesterday.

Deep economic recession and social consequences of Covid-19 for almost the whole year of 2020 have prompted the organisation to suspend global rankings of competitiveness this year.

Instead, its flagship Global Competitiveness Report 2020 has opted for analysing how some economies fared better than others and which countries are best prepared for future economic transformation to look beyond growth.

As the global economy recovers, the opportunity exists for countries to expand their focus beyond a narrow return to growth, says the report dubbed 'Global Competitiveness Report Special Edition 2020: How Countries are Performing on the Road to Recovery.'

The WEF says it suspended its Global Competitiveness Index rankings for 2020 due to extraordinary health, economic and social consequences of Covid-19 that left no nation unscathed and required extraordinary response measures by governments worldwide.

The Bangladesh part of the report will be released by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in a virtual briefing today.

The research organization, which conducts the Bangladesh chapter of the study as a partner organization of WEF, will also present the findings of the Bangladesh Business Environment Study 2020. 

"The findings will highlight performance of Bangladesh economy during the period January–December, 2019 as well as the performance on selected indicators during COVID-19 pandemic," a CPD release says.

The WEF's special edition report outlines priorities for recovery and revival, assesses the features that helped countries be more effective in managing the pandemic.

The report recommends that governments prioritize improving public service delivery, plan for managing public debt and expand digitization.

It advocates proactive investments in new labour market opportunities, a scaling-up of reskilling and upskilling programmes, and safety nets to help drive the recovery.

Best prepared economies

Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Netherlands, USA, Canada, Japan, China, South Africa, South Korea are among the 37 countries that are best prepared for economic transformation, the GCR 2020 lists.