Productivity and Competitiveness
BIS is working to create the conditions for business success and help the UK respond to the challenge of globalisation. Globalisation and the accompanying intensification of competitive pressures are rapidly changing the context in which UK business operates. Business and Government must respond to globalisation by boosting our competitiveness, and that means raising our productivity.
Higher productivity means higher wages, higher profits and better public services. Improving UK productivity performance will be the main source of future improvements in UK living standards.
The Government has identified five drivers of productivity: investment, innovation, skills, enterprise and competition. A wide-ranging programme of reforms has been initiated to boost productivity through the five drivers, including many which work across the five drivers, exploiting synergies between them.
The Indicators
The UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators set out the Government approach to measuring competitiveness. It analyses a broad range of measures across the five fundamental drivers of productivity to arrive at a balanced assessment of how well the UK is performing relative to the competitor economies of the US, France and Germany.
The Indicators were first published in 1999, and annual updates have been published since 2001. The 2008 report refreshed the existing set of indicators to help us better monitor progress on UK productivity performance. The Indicators are an important part of a wider evidence base to understand UK productivity performance and formulate policy. BIS will continue to make this evidence base publicly available through the publication of BIS Economics Papers.
You will find below a link to the latest assessment of the Indicators, published in February 2009. This includes an assessment of overall UK productivity performance, and looks at progress on the underlying drivers of productivity. The paper also considers possible short term impacts on productivity growth and the policies the Government is putting in place to address these issue.
You will also find a link below to the latest Indicators data, which is updated regularly.
Analysis
Further analysis of productivity and competitiveness issues can be found in the Main Economics Paper Series.
Data
All the Indicators data, as described in the latest report, is available on the BIS Statistics website link below. This includes data on the UK's relative performance in investment, innovation, skills, enterprise and competition. It also includes past assessments of the UK Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators.
Productivity and Competitiveness Indicators data (opens new window)
External resources
The External Links (below) include links to the HM Treasury productivity pages (who share overall policy responsibility for improving UK productivity performance with BIS); to the Office for National Statistics productivity pages (who provide much of the data for our evidence base on understanding productivity); to the OECD productivity pages (the OECD do a lot of work to produce internationally-comparable measure of productivity and its drivers); and to the European Commission series on competitiveness and benchmarking.
Contact
Nikos Tsotros
Tel: 020 7215 6375
E-mail: nikos.tsotros@bis.gsi.gov.uk
