Thursday, Apr 05, 2012
Dubai Despite losing its regional leadership in the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology report, experts agree that the UAE is well positioned to regain its competitive position with the enactment of the right policy initiatives, world class telecom infrastructure, access to international talent and supportive business and operational environments.
“With the UAE’s strong commitment of the government to develop and prioritise ICT [information and communications technology] as one of the key engines to diversify its oil dependent economy, it has managed to develop a good ICT related infrastructure and a favourable framework for business and innovation. This has boosted innovation in the form of both new products and services and new organisational models,” Bruno Lanvin, executive director of Insead’s eLab, said.
The UAE has slipped six positions and surrendered regional leadership to Bahrain in the latest report produced in cooperation with Insead.
‘Major trends’
The UAE is ranked 30th this year compared to 24th in 2011.
The report examines the networked readiness of 142 developed and developing countries worldwide — accounting for over 98 per cent of the world’s GDP. The index measures how these markets leverage advances in ICT to drive economic productivity and social development.
“We see four major business trends in the region — the diversification strategies of governments to create sustainable and diversified businesses from an oil-based economy, the expansion strategies of local organisations across the region, the need for more security and the management of the impact of the Arab Spring,” Vittorio D’Orazio, research director at Gartner, told Gulf News.
“To underpin those strategies, hardware and software will play a key role and are predicted to have the fastest growth rates in 2012, as well as in the following years,” he said.
Milind Singh, Principal at Booz and Company, said the Gulf region was vulnerable on the global ICT competitiveness scale.
He said after gaining an average of four positions between 2009 and 2010, the top four GCC countries (Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia) surrendered their competitive momentum with an average regression of two positions in 2011. Only Kuwait has grown significantly, gaining 13 positions — albeit from a low starting position of 72.
He said government performance remains strong, while challenges remain to be addressed in broadband and skills.
‘Need to be aware’
Lanvin said the advent of accelerating transformations in the way we generate, transmit, store, share and use data bears both the promise of new opportunities to bridge that digital divide and the threat of deeper ones in areas such as broadband, cloud computing, social media or big data.
“These are issues that countries need to be aware of, and for which appropriate policies will need to be designed as a matter of urgency.”
By Naushad K. Cherrayil?Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
