On Monday 30 October 2017, Luxembourg's Secretary of State for the Economy, Francine Closener, presented the 2017 edition of the Competitiveness Report, prepared by the Observatoire de la compétitivité (ODC) and presenting notably the new scoreboard measuring Luxembourg's competitiveness in comparison with other EU Member States.
The old version of the scoreboard, in use since 2006, has been updated by modifying or deleting some indicators that have become obsolete while incorporating some new indicators. At the request of the Ministry of the Economy, the Economic and Social Council (ESC) took up the project and drew up a new scoreboard adopted unanimously in its opinion of 8 July 2016. Secretary of State Closener congratulated the social partners for this qualitative and constructive work.
The structure of the new scoreboard takes into account in a balanced way the different aspects of competitiveness as defined by the ESC, namely economic, social and environmental aspects. The new scoreboard is based on 67 indicators, including 41 entirely new ones, which are grouped into the three categories of economy, social and environment.
Luxembourg ranks fourth in the European Union in the competitiveness scoreboard: it ranks seventh for the economy aspect, first for the social aspect and ninth for the environment aspect. Secretary of State Closener said: "The new competitiveness scoreboard gives more prominence to the social and environmental indicators, recognising the importance of these aspects for competitiveness. This new approach is in line with our qualitative growth objectives for Luxembourg."
In addition to the new scoreboard, in the Competitiveness Report 2017, the Observatoire de la compétitivité also presents an analysis of Luxembourg's ranking in benchmarks drawn up by international organisations and devotes a chapter to the European semester in order to monitor the indicators and Luxembourg's objectives in the framework of the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Macroeconomic Imbalances Monitoring Procedure.
Moreover, since 2015, the Competitiveness Report closely follows the evolution of the five new priority sectors of economic development in Luxembourg. According to the latest available data, these five sectors (information and communication technologies (ICT), space technologies, logistics, health sciences and technologies, environmental technologies) accounted for around 10.5% in 2014; gross value added generated in Luxembourg and nearly 33,000 jobs in more than 2,830 companies.
Photo by MECO, (L-R): Serge Allegrezza, directeur de l’Observatoire de la compétitivité; Francine Closener, Secretary of State for the Economy; Daniel Becker, secrétaire général du CES
