Italy falls six places in a "disastrous" performance

During the webcast of the Global Competitiveness Report launch yesterday, Michael Porter and Xavier Sala-I-Martin both remarked on Italy's "disastrous" performance. Italy fell six places behind last year's ranking to number 47, two places behind Botswana. Compare this to 2001, when Italy placed number 26.

What is happening in Italy? The ranking this year was partly based on the Executive Opinion Survey. This survey incorporates feedback from business executives inside Italy into the quantifiable competitiveness data. I would like to know to what the Italian media and business community attribute the country's competitiveness ranking.

Comments

[Kat]

So what IS their health system?

[du]

what happend?

[Lorenzo]

Well, I think that since the survey is based in part on an executive opinion survey, the fact that Italians tend to be very critical towards their country also plays a role, although it's true that the political/social environment has worsened since Berlusconi took power four years ago. However, I doubt that doing business in Italy is harder in Botswana. I just want to recall an interesting example regarding international surveys. When you ask Italians about their public health system, you'll always find them saying it's terrible. Well, three-four years ago, a study by the World Health Organization (which must be quite well informed when it comes to health) revealed that Italy's health system was "surprisingly" second best in the world after France's. And this because the survey did not gauge personal opinions, but rathered considered facts such as the availability of free health care, average costs, etc...and didn't look exclusively at subjective factors and perceptions.