When the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) was proclaimed by Forbes to be the most unfriendly nation in the world for expatriates earlier this year, it sparked such an avalanche of angry responses the business information company was forced to review its listings. But Abdullah Nasser Lootah, secretary general of the Emirates Competitiveness Council (ECC) took the rating as a challenge and says the reaction, from both national and expatriate residents, is a sign the nation is heading in the right direction.
The Forbes listing aside, international reports and indices ranking a nation’s competitiveness and economic achievements are important to small, open economies like the U.A.E. seeking trade and foreign direct investment necessary to achieve scale enough for productivity increases. “For economies with a well-established credibility and brand rankings, this will be meaningless, but for emerging markets they can be a way to introduce or improve the branding of their economy,” says INSEAD Professor of Economics, Antonio Fatas. “Countries and governments cannot ignore them because investors (especially those who are foreign) will partly rely on these rankings as a source of information about a country.”
