Qatar’s Efficient Government

If a question is asked that which government is the most efficient globally, World EconomicForum (WEF) has announced that. The Forum considers that Qatar government is the most efficient one in world. Next place is for Singapore, third place is for Finland, Hong Kong comes next while UAE stood at 5^th position. Next five contestants were New Zealand, Rwanda, Malaysia, Switzerland and Luxembourg. This data has been extracted from Global Competitiveness Report’s latest edition. This report considered efficiency of 144 governments on measures like government spending wastage, regulation burden and policymaking transparency for global ranking.

This way if we look at the bottom of the list, the last three countries happen to be Venezuela, Italy and Argentina. The Forum believes that government efficiency directly effects country’s competitiveness as well as on economic growth. Similarly excessive bureaucracy with rules and regulations with lack of transparency plus inadequate legal frameworks all have additional costs on business and obstruct country’s expansion. Rwanda has surprised the forum by showing minimum wastage in government spending. Forum’s verdict about Qatar, though remains a question by many but the Forum decided that. Independent Newspaper from UK tells David Roberts, who is King’s College London academician specializing on Gulf international relations as well as security, considered this decision as "hard to fathom". He lived in Qatar for four years for his pursuits. He raised questions on research methodology and the meaningfulness of the findings. He commented that he does not care how solid is the methodology but those who have direct exposure by living in Qatar will not believe in these findings too.

One of the bloggers is surprised to see the recently defaulted country Greece is not in the bottom countries list to which another blogger agrees. Another comment came as the findings have a very brief and thirsty background with almost no foundation

A blogger commented quoting traffic violations that a violator can immediately have access to Captain to seek discount and that is efficiency of the government. A blogger comments that it is the sweet willof the Captain to decide and amusingly names these discretions as “Khalifa System”

In response to this another blogger responded by suggesting that people should look at the things from a larger perspective. He comments that an ordinary expat working inQatar has average salary as QR 2000 where as traffic violation like crossing a red light would cost him QR 6000. This situation is quite a burden on him as well as on his family for several months to meet with his liability that popped up out of the blue. The Captain does not forego the whole fine but allows a discount. He basically considers all avenues like whether the driver is habitual of breaking law or what exactly was the situation when a specific violation occurred and whether the violation was inadvertant or delibrate etc.This way the violator has to pay the fine as the officers do not agree to discounts in all cases too. For low salaried people, the penalty keeps them haunting for a long time. The blogger feels that rich people have their own perspective about life and government efficiency and poor have to be through the mill as usual. This way Forum’s decision seems to be the decision by the opulent class.

The last blogger however gives a simple solution to penalties on traffic violations, “Obey the law and avoid all penalties”

Do you agree?