FOREWORD
I am delighted to welcome you to the 2009 edition of the APO Productivity Databook.
While releasing this new edition is a pleasure, the world is currently experiencing
a global financial crisis which severely affects the economies of the APO
region. Urgent but careful analysis of potential economic growth is thus being sought.
In that connection, detailed productivity analyses are one among many other informative
analytical sources for both public and private decision-makers to reassess the
development engine of the economy and strategize how to overcome the challenge
of economic stagnation.
This edition achieved some notable improvements compared to the 2008 edition
in terms of precision and the coverage of the data presented for cross-country comparisons.
The latest PPP estimates, which were revised at the 2005 International
Comparison Program and published by the World Bank in 2008, are used for analyzing
various productivity indicators to reflect a more realistic picture of the actual
economy. The time-series coverage presented in this edition is also extended back
from 1970 to 2006, and this enables readers to appreciate the status of the economy
retrospectively at the time of the first oil shock in the early 1970s; this allows a comparison
of a period of financial turmoil decades ago with the current one.
This publication is a tangible achievement of the APO Productivity Databook project, initiated by the Research and Planning Department of the APO Secretariat
in collaboration with Keio Economic Observatory, Keio University, in 2007. The
APO is planning to strengthen its think-tank roles through this research project, to
improve and expand further the harmonized productivity data and analysis as a part
of its efforts to serve member countries in accelerating productivity and economic
growth. With richer and wider analyses of the role and sources of productivity
growth, it is hoped that this publication will be a useful guide for national and private
policy-makers, as well as for the respective national productivity organizations,
in identifying their development priorities and formulating need-based projects.
Lastly, I wish to thank all the national experts for providing the original national
data in line with the APO methodology. Profound gratitude is extended to the team
of productivity specialists-cum-authors of this publication at the Keio Economic Observatory,
Professor Koji Nomura, Ms. Eunice Y. M. Lau and Mr. Hideyuki Mizobuchi,
who have made significant contributions to upgrading the quality of the data
and the methodology. This solid international comparison of productivity would not
have been possible without their careful and meticulous work.
I hope that readers will appreciate the information provided in this publication
and find practical use for it.
Shigeo Takenaka
Secretary-General
Tokyo, March 2009
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