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Situational character, absence of data on new productive structures and significant weight of opinion polls. These are some of the main criticisms of experts from Brazil and the United States to the competitiveness indicators that base the traditional rankings released today. With survey methodologies considered questionable, the famous international indexes on the subject would have a weak relationship with the development and growth actually observed in the countries.
 
Brazilian and North American entities linked to the government, academia and industry in both countries understand that, although they generate great repercussions in the media, the current competitiveness rankings do not effectively contribute to the construction of public policies. For this reason, led by the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI) and the US Council on Competitiveness (CoC) - an entity dedicated to strengthening the competitiveness of the United States -, a group of experts came together to create the Competitiveness Decoder, a new system of visualization of metrics online. 
 
In addition to ABDI and CoC, representatives of the Competitive Brazil Movement (MBC), the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea) also participate in the project. The work takes place within the scope of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC), a network of leaders of competitiveness councils that aims to promote dialogue on the topic and which approved the proposal presented by Brazil and the USA.
 
“The Competitiveness Decoder is already implemented in a pilot phase, bringing together a 12-year series of 164 indicators from 65 different countries. The data are distributed in an unprecedented way, in eight dimensions: general performance of the economy, economic complexity, infrastructure, capital, talent, innovation, quality of life and future growth ”, explains the manager of ABDI's Strategic Projects and Analysis, Roberto Alvarez.
 
To arrive at the current model, the group discussed concepts of competitiveness and ways of measuring it. “The next stage is the presentation of the Decoder in competitiveness forums in Brazil and abroad throughout 2014, until its official launch by the GFCC, at the end of the year, in a meeting in Russia”, anticipates ABDI's special advisor Guilherme Amaral. “With this tool, we will have data of real utility, which actually contribute, for example, to investment decisions”, he adds.
 
The tool
 
In addition to the exclusive use of official, objective and internationally comparable data, the Competitiveness Decoder has the differential of grouping countries according to their indicators on different themes, within the eight dimensions that base the project. For each one of them, there are also a series of specific indicators to which it is possible to give different weights to each consultation, depending on the scenario that one wishes to observe.
 
“Our goal was to create a robust instrument, based on official data, that allows the analysis of the central elements for the competitiveness of each country”, details the head professor of the Production Engineering Department at the Polytechnic School and coordinator of the Observatory of Innovation and Competitiveness of USP, Mário Salerno.
 
To consult the Competitiveness Decoder, simply access the address decoder.thegfcc.org

 
 

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