Qatar ranked (14) in The World Competitiveness Yearbook 2020 - which it is annually published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) located in Lausanne of Switzerland - out of (63) countries, mostly high-income countries. The results confirm Qatar’s strong performance across various fields. The ranking was based on national statistics as well as opinions of sample businesses managers who provided their views of Qatar’s economy competitive climate.
Areas, where Qatar ranked highly in the report, included economic performance (ranked 6), government efficiency (ranked 7) and business efficiency (ranked 11). Moreover, Qatar has maintained its ranking at (40) for infrastructure.
Qatar’s rank has been positively influenced by many factors including strong economic performance as represented by, Qatar’s low unemployment rate (ranked first), high percentage of gross fixed capital formation, capital investments, and saving to GDP (ranked first for all three), percentage of trade balance to GDP (ranked first), the high overall productivity (ranked first) and low inflation rate (ranked third) whereby other factors had negatively influented the rank as real GDP growth per capita (rank 58), Office rents (rank 52), Business expenditure on R&D % (rank 57).
Qatar’s competitiveness assessment in IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2020 is a collaborative effort between International Institute for Management Development and Planning and Statistics Authority. The State of Qatar has contributed to the IMD Competitiveness Yearbook for the 12th time.
His Excellency the President of Planning & Statistics Authority, Dr. Saleh Bin Mohammed Al Nabit, welcomed the findings of the report, stating that “these results confirm the solid overall performance and that the results will certainly help us to identify areas for further improvements”. HE. added that “Qatar’s Second National Development Strategy 2018-2022, sets out clear goals in the areas of economic infrastructure and private sector development that will lead to economic and social growth.
Attributed to Prof. Christos Cabolis, Chief Economist, IMD World Competitiveness Center
"Landing itself an impressive 14th place globally, Qatar has proven to be impressively resilient to crises. As by the end of 2019 the global economy was already starting to look shaky, and although our rankings show that Qatar was among of the first to show tangible signs of this, compared to other economies, Qatar quickly reacted. Something that resulted in dropping only in our short-term measurements, while ensuring long-term indicators such as health, education and business finance continued to improve in line with Qatar’s long-term trajectory."
"This is a sign of a crisis resilient economy, especially in the face of a global downturn. We expect Qatar to be one of the first to rebound from the current global situation.”
