FOREWORD
Since its establishment in 1961, the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) has
strongly pursued a central mission of advancing productivity growth and economic
development in the Asia and Pacific region. Productivity growth has
been one of the main engines for improved economic performance in Asia in the
post-war period. As we have witnessed, the region has made tremendous economic
progress over the past several decades. Recognizing this achievement as it relates to
the APO’s goal of greater regional prosperity, it is my pleasure to mention also that
the APO will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year.
Building on five decades of cooperation with our member countries, the APO
has implemented a variety of practices with a view to improving the welfare of the
region’s peoples through productivity tools. The APO has organized more than 500
training programs for a wide variety of production management tools in this time for
the benefit of our members. Moreover, in recent decades, as environmental degradation has become a more pressing global issue, the APO has extended efforts to promote
green productivity in the pursuit of sustainable development.
Amongst our many endeavors over the course of the APO’s history, efforts to improve productivity measurement for the better understanding of sources of economic
growth have been an important focus of the APO’s Research and Planning
activities. The continued demand from many APO member countries for a project
that enabled productivity measurement led us to re-engineer the APO Productivity Databook series from 2007. As such, the project team strived hard to develop a harmonized
methodology, allowing a comparative productivity analysis across countries
to be realized and published in the first edition of the Databook in 2008.
This third edition of the APO Productivity Databook series is the tangible fruit of
our continuous joint research efforts with the Keio Economic Observatory (KEO),
Keio University. This edition includes analyses of the productivity performance of
our APO member countries from 1970 to 2007, as well as that of reference economies,
with a wider coverage of TFP analysis, including Fiji, Thailand, Indonesia and
the Philippines, compared to the last edition. The Databook further explores real
income analysis as an attempt to measure welfare beyond GDP indicators, as well as
the industry origin of productivity performance.
While having a great pleasure in releasing this edition, my profound gratitude
goes to the research team at the KEO, namely Prof. Koji Nomura, Ms. Eunice Lau,
Dr. Hideyuki Mizobuchi, Ms. Kyoko Ishikawa, Ms. Shinyoung Oh, Ms. Soyoen
Myung and Ms. Keiko Inoue. I also wish to thank all the national experts for providing
and updating their respective national data and metadata.
I hope that readers will enjoy referencing this publication and find practical use
of it in their own purposes.
Shigeo Takenaka
Secretary-General
Tokyo, March 2010
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