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Dr Gift Mugano Correspondent
There are approximately 40 National Competitiveness Councils or Commissions worldwide including United States, Egypt, Croatia, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, United Arab Emirates, Brazil and South Korea. In these countries, some are led by the private sector (US, Egypt and Croatia) while other are led by governments (Ireland, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam).

Regardless of who leads, successful councils usually involve stakeholders from Government, the private sector, academia and in many cases trade unions.

Recently, the Government approved the principles for the establishment of the National Competitiveness Commission (NCC).

This is a welcome development considering the fact that Zimbabwe’s drive to tackle uncompetitiveness. Although the establishment of the NCC is still work in progress, it mission under current circumstances should be to contribute directly to the achievement of the goals contained in the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation by identifying constraints to productivity and economic growth, recommending practical solutions for these and ensuring that these have been developed with inclusive public-private dialogue that leads to broad support for the Government’s competitiveness agenda.

The general objective of the NCC should be to contribute to achieving the ambitious goals in the Government’s current five-year plan (Zim-Asset) and beyond. Specific contributing objectives include:

◆ To contribute to increasing Zimbabwe’s productivity;

◆ To focus on constraints to growth in specific Zimbabwean industries;

◆ To identify cross-cutting constraints to growth and productivity and provide solutions;

◆ To inform policy-making with fact-driven analysis; and

◆ To enable Zimbabwe to articulate its competitiveness strategy globally.

In order to achieve these objectives the NCC should:

◆ Commission good data to inform Government on benchmarking on costs, policies, industry performance and having the mandate to get data from national statistics agencies and international sources as may be needed;

◆ Commission specific analytic pieces as necessary, industry by industry or on cross-cutting constraints to growth and productivity;

◆ Working in collaboration with National Economic Consultative Forum, engage in dialogue with industry, private sector, academia to add get feedback on data and analysis, add qualitative inputs, ensure validity of conclusions and recommendations;

◆ Supervise and produce the Zimbabwe National Competitiveness Report which will annually track progress;

◆ To interact with other National Competitiveness Commissions and National Competitiveness Councils globally and to support the presentation of Zimbabwe’s competitiveness agenda in global forums; and

◆ To make available to Zimbabwe universities material that will facilitate research and teaching related to Zimbabwe’s competitiveness and productivity and to encourage such practical research and teaching in close public-private-academia cooperation.

To undertake the activities above, the Commission should have the mandate to:

◆ Commission data and statistics from relevant Government departments;

◆ Convene industry working groups;

◆ Commission analytical work to relevant experts, think-tanks or universities; and

◆ Mobilise human, financial and technical resources necessary to its tasks.

In undertaking this mandate, based on international best practices, the output of the commission is normally summarised in a National Competitiveness Report which is produced annually.

A National Competitiveness Report is a “snapshot” of a country’s actual and evolving competitiveness, presented through credible data and its interpretation. The World Economic Forum (WEF) describes a competitiveness assessment as a “carefully selected compendium of data and interpretation that informs by analysing a region or nation’s current economic standing and framework and assesses how it performs relative to other countries in selected criteria and measures of competitive prowess”.

A competitiveness assessment benchmarks the country’s performance on carefully selected indicators globally and against selected comparator country economies. The assessment uses current and trend data. It takes into account the national side of the story by including current, locally available information, and it uses dozens of data source; hence not just Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) and World Bank’s Doing Business data.

The National Competitiveness Report will be a helpful tool to the effective implementation Zim-Asset. Assessments are normally structured in a way that provides direct information related to Zim-Asset’s mission and its four clusters, it provides a global context to informing and understanding progress to Zimbabwe’s economic blueprint described in Zim-Asset. As part of the definition of competitiveness, the assessment will naturally emphasize strategies such as those incorporated into Zim-Asset’s that are directed towards “full exploitation and value addition to the country’s resources”.

Zim-Asset seeks to “address numerous challenges affecting quality service delivery and economic growth”.

The Government can use the assessment to track performance in achieving Zim-Asset’s objectives, and its impact, in terms of Zimbabwe’s economic performance in the context of global competitiveness.

The assessment is customisable, enabling stakeholders to understand the competitiveness of indicators that are of particular relevance to Zim-Asset’s achievement and impact.

Thus, the assessment can help stakeholders to track and understand Zimbabwe’s performance with respect to Zim-Asset’s key assumptions, and can include specific focus (“deep dives”) on the competitiveness of Zimbabwe’s key growth drivers.

The information provided will inform decision making, identify initiatives that are effective or not, and suggest mid-course changes in emphasis.

The assessment process also reflects and extends the inclusive, consultative process on which the development of Zim-Asset was based.

The process incorporates extensive consultation, validation and dialogue, both during the assessment a well as in its dissemination.

It is therefore an excellent mechanism to continue to build commitment to Zim-Asset’s Vision of an “Empowered Society and Growing Economy”.

The competitiveness assessment is an excellent tool for building national consensus, promotional tool for investors, and also promotional tool that will generate interest amongst multilateral and bilateral partners.

As we establish the NCC, it is important to bear in mind the underlying values and assumptions of successful commissions. These are:

◆ The ultimate goal of the countries who established Competitiveness Commissions was to establish sustainable prosperity of their respective people. In Zimbabwe’s case, this is clearly the purpose of Zim-Asset. Hence, the NCC is the right vehicle in achieving this goal.

◆ Sustainable increases in prosperity are based on increases in productivity. However, one has to bear in mind that productivity growth is not only doing things better but doing better things.

◆ Competitiveness can be defined as sustainable increases in productivity that results in tangible benefits for the average citizen. And, most importantly, competitiveness is not a matter of low wages or cheap raw materials. As a matter of fact most countries with low wages are uncompetitive.

◆ Achieving competitiveness is partly a matter of identifying cost drivers of production and seeing where these can be reduced or “doing things better”. Rather, competitiveness means using Zimbabwe’s talents and assets for higher value activities or “doing better things.”

◆ What it means is that the NCC should embrace leaders and participants in specific industries who are in the best position to identify the opportunities for competitiveness as well as the constraints.

Involving the private sector (including enterprises, trade unions and experts) in identifying constraints and opportunities is the best way to get the analytics right and to formulate and implement lasting solutions. In most cases, based on best practices, inter-ministerial co-operation and co-ordination is vital to achieving ambitious economic goals.

◆ Beyond just establishing research on cost drivers, identifying opportunities and constrains and addressing them, Zimbabwe, at the right time, need to articulate its competitiveness agenda to the global community through economic dashboards, websites, investment promotion agencies and other vehicles.

This will help in addressing negative international perception which is one of the major cause of uncompetitiveness otherwise we will stand to suffer the fate of a beautiful lady who dresses up and puts on expensive clothes, make-up and admires herself in the mirror but stays indoors resulting in her missing out on meeting a prospective lover!

◆ Dr Mugano is an Economic Advisor, author and expert in trade and competitiveness and Research Associate at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (SA). Feedback: email: [email protected], Cell: +263 772 541 209.