Explanation and Analysis of Competitivness in the Countries Considered in Iran's 20-Year Vision Plan and Iran's Priorities for Enhancing Competitiveness

Competitiveness index presented by World Economic Forum in the Framework of three factors, i.e. basic requirements, efficiency, and innovation indicates that as far as the “basic requirements” factor is concerned, Iran enjoys a relatively better status than other countries considered in the study though some of these requirements, namely basic education and health are less influential in efficiency and innovation. Studying the points gained on three factors of basic requirements, efficiency, and innovation was indicative of Iran’s weakness in competitive advantage. Given the influential macroeconomic variables, analyzing the competitive advantage as well as the competitive strengths and weaknesses of Iran and other regional countries indicates that efficiency is crucial factor to increase competitiveness. Therefore the results demonstrate that Iran’s priorities to enhance competitiveness with the aim of meeting the goals of 20-year vision plan would be as follows: efficiency of supporting and competitive policies, reforming laws and procedures of labor market, financial markets development, paying attention to inflation effects of policies, using capacities of existing laws and reforming them in the domain of intellectual property and foreign investment, enhancing supervision and evaluation powers, and finally reforming the present standards.