São Paulo State Takes First Place in Three Competitiveness Ranking Categories

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The state of São Paulo ranked first in the 2019 State Competitiveness Ranking, prepared by ‘CLP – Public Leadership’ to gather data on issues and challenges faced by key areas of public administration.

Ten key issues considered essential for promoting competitiveness and improving public management in the Brazilian states are assessed: infrastructure, social sustainability, public safety, education, fiscal soundness, the efficiency of government machinery, human capital, environmental sustainability, market potential, and innovation.

São Paulo remains at the top in infrastructure, regarded as one of the main challenges for improving competitiveness. This is the fifth consecutive year that the state has taken the first position in this category. The highlight is due to the good positioning in \fuel cost, availability of direct flights, quality of highways and accessibility of telecommunications service indicators. However, São Paulo is poorly placed in the telecommunications service quality and electric power quality items, which also are part of the assessment.

In the education category, São Paulo is first in the education assessment indicators, Basic Education Development Index (IDEB), National High School Examination (ENEM), Education Opportunity Index, secondary school net attendance rate and child education attendance rate. In terms of innovation, the ranking is assigned to São Paulo due to the fact that the state remained in first place in the investment in research and development (R&D) indicator, even after having dropped one position in relation to the ranking’s previous edition and was fourth in the patent indicator and sixth in the master and doctoral scholarship.

In the public safety category, the state of São Paulo lost first place in 2018, slipping to third place. The indicators influencing the result were arrests without conviction, prison deficit, deaths to be resolved and traffic fatalities. The state also lost positions in the social sustainability aspects (from the third place because of inadequate housing, families below the poverty line, income inequality and potential years of life lost), fiscal soundness (from 12th to 14th) and efficiency of the government machinery (from third to fifth).

On the other hand, the state climbed from fourth to second place in the environmental sustainability category by improving urban services, waste disposal, and sewage treatment indicators. São Paulo remained in second place in the market potential category and in fourth place in the human capital category because of its high score in relation to the economically active population (EAP), including higher education, labor productivity, and worker qualification.

Source: Agência Brasil