It is therefore imperative that competitiveness features high on the economic reform agenda of both advanced and emerging and developing economies. For more than three decades, the World Economic Forum's annual Global Competitiveness Reports.
have studied and benchmarked the many factors underpinning national competitiveness. From the onset, the goal has been to provide insight and stimulate discussion among all stakeholders about the best strategies and policies to help countries to overcome the obstacles to improved competitiveness. .
In the current challenging economic environment, our work is a critical reminder of the importance of sound structural economic fundamentals for sustained growth. Since 2005, the World Economic Forum has based its competitiveness analysis on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), a comprehensive tool that measures the microeconomic and macroeconomic foundations of national competitiveness. More recently, in order to better place the discussion of competitiveness in the societal and environmental context, the World Economic Forum has begun exploring the complex relationship between competitiveness and sustainability as measured by its social and environmental dimension. The work carried out to date on these important aspects of human and economic development is described in Chapter 1.2. Going forward, the World Economic Forum will further support countries in their quest for higher competitiveness by compiling and publishing a repository of public-private practices that countries have implemented in order to improve their competitiveness. Together with the Index results, these practices will inform a series of structured multi-stakeholder dialogues (see Box 1) that will be piloted over the coming year. We hope that this new initiative will support transformations toward higher competitiveness at regional and national levels.
The 12 Pillars of Competitiveness .