DOHA: Qatar has outperformed in the GCC and the rest of the world in most dimensions – including income, employment, health, infrastructure, income equality, civil society, and governance – when it comes to its current-level of Sustainable Economic Development Assessment (SEDA) scores, according to a latest report by a leading consulting group.
The report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading global management consulting and advisory firm, Qatar, across all the above dimensions has topped the average scores of both the GCC and the rest of the world.
The dimensions in which Qatar lags behind are environment and economic stability.
In terms of education, Qatar underperforms relative to the GCC yet exceeds the median score of the rest of the world. Interestingly, compared to the GCC region and the rest of the world, Qatar showed strong recent-progress scores in governance, economic stability, health, and employment.
“Qatar must focus on reversing the recent backward trend on dimensions such as environment and civil society or risk falling behind other GCC states,” said Douglas Beal, a Partner and Managing Director at BCG Middle East and a coauthor of the report.
“Qatar’s strong and improving recent-progress scores in governance, economic stability, health, and employment serve as a basis to support future progress and advancements. Overall SEDA provides a powerful diagnostic foundation which can be used to help identify policy priorities.”
These findings were revealed by BCG’s latest SEDA study. The fact-based, comprehensive analysis measured the relative well-being of 149 countries – including Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – and their performance in converting wealth to well-being along social and economic indicators.
This year’s results highlight a new global divide and point to the fact that more than half of the world's population lives in countries that are falling behind in sustainable development. They also challenge the conventional wisdom regarding the expected growth patterns for middle-income countries.
SEDA defines well-being through three elements – economics, investments, and sustainability – that cover ten key areas, or dimensions, including economic stability, health, governance, and environment. In total, the assessment draws on nearly 50,000 data points. SEDA scores countries in two ways: as a snapshot – the current level of well-being – and as the amount of recent progress gained in well-being during the period of 2006 to 2013.
QATAR IN FOCUS
Qatar outperforms the average of the GCC and the rest of the world in both current-level and recent-progress scores in governance, health, and employment. The fact is, in the governance, income, income equality, employment, and health dimensions, Qatar is higher and moving further ahead compared to the GCC region.
In the civil society and infrastructure dimensions, Qatar is higher but losing ground. Based on BCG’s SEDA analysis, Qatar is lower but improving in economic stability and lower and falling further behind in education and environment – when stacked up against the average of the GCC.
Poland has the best record of converting economic growth into gains in well-being, and
Singapore and Northern European countries are the top scorers in terms of current levels of well-being.
Germany outstrips the U.S. when it comes to converting both wealth and growth into well-being.
Rwanda and Ethiopia hold the top spots when it comes to improvements in well-being, and countries in sub-Saharan Africa – as a group – are making strong advances in health.
The Peninsula
