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April 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
The index is part of the EBRD’s approach to measure countries’ progress according to six qualities of a sustainable market economy: competitive, resilient, green, integrated, well- governed and inclusive. It has four pillars with 38 indicators: institutions for innovation, general skills and specialised skills for innovation, inputs and outputs of the innovation system and the linkages within the system and information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure.
“This is an important initiative which will help
our countries identify their strengths and weak- nesses in innovation. Such an impartial analysis is a prerequisite for developing policy guidance and targeting our investment," commented Mat- tia Romani, EBRD managing director, economics, policy and governance.
"There are no one-size-fits-all policies to promote the knowledge economy. Rather, countries should adopt reforms that take into account the stage of their knowledge-economy development," he added.
Estonia ranked first with a total score of 6.82 on
a one a 1 to 10 scale, where 1 stands for theoreti- cally least advanced and 10 to theoretically most advanced, followed by Slovenia (6.65) and Lithuania. Indeed the Baltic dominated the top of the table,
as the remaining baltic state, Latvia, was in fourth place. The top ranked countries are “not too far from OECD comparators (7.36),” notes the report.
Slovenia scored best in terms of institutions for innovation (7.40). It scored 7.32 on the skills for innovation pillar and 6.73 on the ICT infrastructure pillar. It scored 5.14 on the innovation system pillar.
Russia's online exports could reach $10bn in up to 7 years
Russia's online exports of goods could reach $10bn in 3-7 years, according to the estimates of eBay Russia and Emerging Europe cited by Prime on March 28.
The market was valued at $430mn in 2016 with
only 0.3% of Russian SMEs exporting their goods online, Ilya Kretov of eBay estimated. The figure in Western Europe is at 7%-8%, and Russia has enormous 25-fold upside potential, he argues.
In 2018 the online exports of Russian goods increased by 36% to $746mn.
Russian e-commerce market could reach RUB2.78 trillion ($43bn) by 2024 according to the study by the Gaidar Institute published this month. This would bring online sales to 8.5% of all Russian re- tail market, up from 3.5% in 2017 and 4.1% in 2018.
In absolute terms this would almost double the e-commerce market estimated in 2018 at RUB1.5 trillion ($22.8bn). Gaidar's forecast is a conserva- tive one at that, with Morgan Stanley expecting RUB3.5 trillion market by 2024, RBC reminds.
Gaidar's study notes of rising rates of internet penetration in Russia to about 70%, but notes that in the past three years the share of those involved in e-commerce plateaued at 35-43% of the popu- lation or 41mn-51mn people.
World Bank to open shared services
centre in Bulgaria
The World Bank will open a shared services cen- tre in Bulgaria that provide back office corporate and technology support to the group’s internal business operations, the government said in a statement after backing the bank’s intention at its March 13 session.
This will be World Bank’s second such centre. The first is located in India and serves the organisation with accounting, HR, IT and other services.
In Bulgaria, the centre is expected to employ 275 people within five years.
The World Bank announced its intention to launch the facility back in January. It has picked Bulgaria due to its strategic location, qualified labour force and good infrastructure, the government said in the statement.