Editorial: let's start working on our weaknesses
13.09.2010, 11:00Instead of feeling satisfaction that World Economic Forum ranked Estonia up two places to 33rd by competitiveness among 139 countries, Estonians should think how to make it into top 25, writes Äripäev in its editorial.
Let's start by looking at the areas where Estonia did poorly. First, international flight connections where Estonia ranked 125th. There may be finally some improvement as last week brought the news that Estonian Air had ordered three new aircraft from Bombardier. This contract is also the last hurdle standing before the takeover of Estonian Air from SAS. Once Estonian Air is controlled by the state, the latter can tell it where and when to fly.
Of course, you can ask whether anyone knows where to and when flights should depart from Tallinn? Because businessmen doing business in Bulgaria would like a direct flight to Sofia, while wine importers would like it to fly to Provance, Toscana and Andalusia, but why not also to Chile and New Zealand. But would we tolerate a government that forces Estonian Air to fly all these interest groups to their required destinations in half-empty planes? Probably not.
Let's go on. Estonia did poorly also by flexibility of labour market relations (123rd), HIV infections (110th) and domestic market size (107th). The last item is particularly difficult since we only have 45,000 square kilometres of land and less than 1.5 million relatively poor people.
One final aspect that needs to be taken into account that one-third of the score comes from state statistics, while the rest is based on answers given by business executives to a questionnaire. Since Estonians are traditionally unsatisfied, there could be an improvement in statistics, but hardly in opinion.