It should come as no surprise to anyone that the UAE leads the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member-states and the broader Middle East and North Africa region in terms of economic competitiveness. The World Economic Forum has duly confirmed this in its ‘2014-15 Global Competitiveness’ report, an annual study released last week.

The UAE muscled into the 12th spot among the 144 economies on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), which is an integral part of the report issued by the Swiss-based entity and which is the convenor of the annual summit meeting of global leaders and thought pioneers in Davos. The UAE was assigned the 19th rank in the 2013-14 report.

Much to its credit, GCI is noted for offering a comprehensive insight of the reviewed economies by relying on a set of variables. The index bases its ranks on the basis of achievements across three broad categories, namely how an economy meets the basic requirements, efficiency enhancers and innovation and sophistication factors.

More specifically, the basic requirements category is subdivided into institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education. The efficiency enhancers relate to higher education and training, goods and market efficiency as well as in the labour market, financial market sophistication, technological readiness and market size. The innovation and sophistication factors relate to, for obvious reasons, the level of business sophistication and innovation.

The three categories are brought together into the formulation of the GCI, which comprises of a maximum of seven points. The index is developed by using publicly available data and WEF’s own opinion surveys. Business leaders are polled for the purpose of gathering data.

The UAE’s ranking is ahead of most EU countries and only behind the likes of Switzerland, Singapore and the US, etc.

Understandably, the innate strengths of the UAE relate to its notable infrastructure. The steady pace of new reforms ahead of the hosting of Expo 2020 will further add to the competitiveness aspect.

The UAE’s new status means it has overtaken Qatar, which fell three places to 16th. The Qatari economy needs to improve on several fronts including opening it up to competition from foreign sources. It is suggested a relatively small number of investors possess substantial control over certain sectors of the economy, such as hospitality.

For its part, Saudi Arabia lost four positions, and thereby having to settle in at 24th place, brought on by several factors including instability in its labour market. The Saudi authorities started implementing the Nitaqat project in the summer of 2013, designed to ensure employment opportunities for locals at the expense of expatriates.

Certainly, officials are under pressure to provide employment chances for its growing population and to meet their high expectations for careers and compensation packages. Nevertheless, state interference undermines normal functioning of the economy.

Likewise, the Kuwaiti economy lost four notches to be placed 40th. The challenges confronting Kuwait include regular confrontation over economic issues between the elected parliament and appointed government.

Bahrain’s ranking fell by a single notch to 44th worldwide, which is fine compared to the experiences of the other Gulf states except for the UAE. Undoubtedly, its ranking is not outstanding in the context of regional rivalry. Clearly, Bahrain is yet to recover from economic problems emerging from the socio-political crisis dating back to 2011.

Oman saw its ranking plummet 13 places to 46th. The limited scale of the competition is partly blamed for this undesirable ranking.

The writer is a Member of Parliament in Bahrain.