Overview

Competitiveness. General Introduction.

Globalization has opened borders and markets to countries and their industries and companies worldwide. This openness has increased competitive pressures. The global market place does not offer protection or subsidies, and without a high level of competitiveness, products and services cannot meet the test of the global market place. Competitiveness allows for countries and the industries and businesses within them to expand their markets and increase real wage levels, number of jobs, the purchasing power of their citizens both domestically and internationally. Competitiveness creates opportunities for increased return on goods and services. Being able to compete means understanding and being able to cater to the market and its demands, and leads to the economic growth of a country. Competition creates better products and produces revenue. Only those companies that produce better goods and services will sustain in the global market. more...

The Global Competitiveness Report: Prioritizing Competitiveness Initiatives

The recently published Armenia Competitiveness Report (ACR) examines Armenia’s current competitive position, drawing largely on the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR). However, as is the case for most countries, the challenges confronting Armenia are too numerous to tackle all at once. This begs the question: How does a country prioritize what to do first? More...

Cluster-Based Economic Development: Examples from Armenia

The first annual Armenian Competitiveness Report (ACR) highlights the role of clusters as a powerful engine for economic growth. In order to understand how clusters function in practice and the kinds of economic benefits they can deliver, we will examine Armenian clusters in tourism, information technology, and pharmaceuticals. A greater understanding of Armenia’s existing clusters can help Armenia understand how nascent clusters might be supported in other industries. More...

Developing an Effective National Competitiveness Council:
Lessons and Best Practices

Armenia recently took a very important step in recognizing the importance of competitiveness by forming its first National Competitiveness Council (NCC). As such, this would be an appropriate time to share some of the best practices and lessons learned from other countries, both developed and developing, that have created NCCs. Drawing on examples from countries such as Ireland, Singapore, and the USA, this article will look at some of the approaches to council composition, as well as the functions that such councils tend to serve. More...

Armenia Leads Azerbaijan, Trails Georgia in Doing Business 2008

The recently released Doing Business 2008 report ranked Armenia 39th of 178 countries ahead of Azerbaijan at 96th, but behind Georgia at 18th, in the quality of its business environment. Georgia has made a quantum leap in the last two years due to a series of policy reforms that have made it one of the more attractive countries in which to do business. Georgia’s experience carries a number of important lessons for Armenia. More...

Armenia Ranks 32nd, 39th, 83rd, 93rd, and 108th: Understanding and Reconciling the Indicators

The 2007-2008 Global Competitiveness Report (GCR), which has been the subject of much discussion given its recent release, is just one of a number of indexes used to attempt to measure, rank and benchmark a country’s performance. Other prominent indexes include the World Bank’s Doing Business report, The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, and the Human Development Index (HDI), published by UNDP. More...

Conceptual Approaches to the Strategy of Armenia’s Economic Development

Manuk Hergnyan, Gagik Gabrielyan, Ara Chalabyan, Sevak Hovhannisyan. Economy & Values Research Center
Published in Delovoy Express (#37, October 6, 2006), translated from Russian

Armenia is facing the challenge of maintaining its high economic growth which has been achieved today primarily due to private transfers. This does not create sustainable competitive advantages for the Armenian economy and will not secure Armenia’s long-term economic growth. New approaches for the country's development are required.

International practice suggests several successful examples of economies which managed to transform the initial acceleration into sustainable economic growth. This was mainly achieved by the countries which adopted consistent strategy of formulating a distinctive value proposition (e.g. Singapore, China, Ireland).

A value proposition points out to the specific role the country plays in the world or regional economy. What can constitute Armenia’s distinct value proposition? more

Commentary on the article: "Conceptual Approaches to the Strategy of Armenia’s Economic Development"

By: Martin Webber, Technical Director and Artak Melkonyan, Deputy Chief of Party,
USAID/Competitive Armenia Private Sector Project (CAPS)
Published in Delovoy Express (#43, November 17, 2006)

The “Delovoy Express” Newspaper and EVRC should be congratulated for discussing issues related to Armenia’s international competitive performance, in the article “Conceptual Approaches to the Strategy of Armenia’s Economic Development”, of October 6, 2006.

As the expert of the Economy and Values Research Center point out, Armenia has relatively few unique, natural comparative advantages, particularly in these days of closed borders and high transport costs. Any bulky, , heavy or perishable physical good is non-competitive internationally under these conditions – although that barrier is perhaps an advantage to Armenian products sold on the local market, since imports become more costly. Those types of “competitive advantages” are in any event short term and unstable as either they are diminished once the country or its neighbors are developing or are strongly dependant on fiscal or monetary changes, something which we witness today. more