Improved work ethic raises Botswana�s competitiveness
Isaac Pinielo | Tuesday October 4, 2016 18:00
A recent World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report placed poor work ethic, which has over the years negatively impacted on the country’s rankings, at 16.2% this year, dropping from 19% last year.
Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC) research consultant and statistician, Letsogile Batsetswe said although poor work ethic in the national labour force continues to be the most problematic factor for doing business, the severity of this problem has significantly dropped.
There has also been a significant drop in the intensity of inefficient government bureaucracy from 12.7% to 9.5%. Because of these drops, Botswana has moved seven places up showing that its competitiveness has improved in almost all the 12 pillars used by WEF to assess competitiveness.
According to the report, the country is ranked at 64 out of 138 countries, which is believed to be a notable improvement from the previous year where the country was ranked 71 out of 140 countries. The quality score has also improved from 4.2 to 4.3 out a total of seven.
The report indicates that local competition has intensified and the anti-monopoly policy is starting to be effective, jumping from 71 to 63. It added that the degree of customer orientation and buyer sophistication has also improved modestly.
The establishment of the Innovation Hub is also starting to show some results as the innovation pillar has improved from 102 last year to 84 this year, although the quality score of this pillar is still low at 3.2 out of seven.
The report shows that there has been some improvement in the capacity to innovate, company spending on research and development and university-industry collaboration in research and development.
“Initiatives linked to the likes of the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) research and innovation grant probably contributed to this improvement,” BNPC stated.
Two years ago, BNPC embarked on a programme to sensitise the public about poor work ethic, in which more than 280 facilitators were dispatched to train the public sector on work ethic.
The programme was based on three phases, the awareness, the training and the targeted interventions.
The 2016 competitiveness report, however, shows that access to financing has moved up as the second most problematic factor this year followed by an inadequately educated workforce.