Decline in some key indexes fails to account for marked progress made elsewhere By Dr. Sami Mahroum and Dr. Kai L. Chan, Special to Gulf News [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="460"] Image Credit: Jose L. Barros/©Gulf News[/caption] Published: 07:24 March 23, 2016 With 2015 left behind and the new year ahead, it is a good time to pause and take stock of the UAE’s competitiveness as the country edges closer to 2021, and as the KPIs (key performance indicators) of the National Agenda loom closer. The UAE has set many of its development goals based on measures of competitiveness, as reported by third-party international organisations. These include the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR), Global Innovation Index (GII), Human Development Report (HDR), and the World Happiness Report (WHR). The big headline in 2015 was the oil shock: Crude price fell by half. Although the UAE economy is well diversified (oil counts for less than a third of gross domestic product, or GDP), a steep drop in the price of the country’s primary export has not gone unnoticed. Government coffers continue to rely heavily on oil revenues and, subsequently, public investments in large infrastructure projects slow down. The UAE is also impacted by low…
