Launch of APO Book on Asia-Pacific Productivity Data and Analysis
11 January 2002, Foreign Correspondents' Club, Tokyo
Inside the Book
FOREWORD
The
APO celebrates its 40th Anniversary this year. As
an organization, it represents the aspirations of
member countries in Asia and the Pacific to enhance
their socio-economic development through the improvement
of productivity in the industrial, service and agricultural
sectors. The ultimate objective is to attain a better
quality of life for all their people. The first productivity
movement in the region started in Japan in 1955 with
the establishment of the Japan Productivity Center.
Others quickly followed suit. When the APO was founded
in 1961 as a regional intergovernmental organization
to promote cooperation among Asia-Pacific countries
in their productivity drive, there were eight founding
members. Today, the number has swelled to eighteen.
APO membership will likely expand further in the near
future as more countries in the region recognize the
inestimable value of raising productivity in their
developmental quest.
Over the last 40 years, much has been done by APO
member countries to promote and increase productivity.
The scope of activities undertaken and the range of
subjects covered by them are quite phenomenal. The
productivity concept has also been enlarged to embrace
global and social concerns. The active promotion of
productivity and the huge investments in programs
for its improvement inevitably have led to expectations
for quantitative evidence of the contributions of
productivity. In response to this, various attempts
have been made by member countries to measure productivity
performance at the national, industrial and enterprise
levels. It is quite obvious from their experiences
that measuring productivity is far more complex than
it may seem.
Despite this, the APO, as the organization responsible
for productivity in the region, should endeavor to
show the importance of productivity by collecting
and sharing the relevant data of its member countries
so that they can use the data for:
- Comparing results achieved in the productivity
drive with their own planned targets and with those
of other countries,
- Checking progress made,
- Identifying areas where productivity remains
weak, and
- Formulating effective policies to give the
movement further support and impetus.
The intention is to provide all stakeholders and
national policymakers with a set of vital, fundamental
and authoritative information to assist them in their
strategic thinking, policy formulation and action
taking.
With this objective in mind, in October 2000, the
APO appointed a committee of national experts from
15 member countries under the chairmanship of a chief
expert to work out a methodology and framework for
the collection of data relating to productivity at
the national level, determine the types of indicators
to be included in the study, and set guidelines for
the analysis report by each expert. The experts identified
42 indicators for data collection, and they were grouped
under six categories, namely Domestic Economy, Internationalization,
Infrastructure, Science and Technology, Management,
and People.
After a year of intensive data collection, reviews,
updating and analysis, the APO is proud to present
this book entitled Asia-Pacific Productivity Data
and Analysis. This APO book has three parts. The first
part consists of a country-by-country analysis of
their productivity data. Part two contains tables
of the data by country, as well as graphical charts
of every indicator for each country. The tables are
for inter-country comparison, whilst the charts are
intended for use by the participating countries to
study the progress they have made under each indicator
over the period 1990–1999. The charts, therefore,
are not meant for comparison between countries. The
final part gives the data sources of the indicators
by country.
Three major characteristics of this book ought to
be noted:
- It is generally confined to data of APO member
countries; its coverage is not worldwide. The data
of four other countries outside the APO membership
has been included to serve as additional benchmarks
for APO member countries as it is considered useful
for them to evaluate their own performance not only
against those of their counterparts in Asia-Pacific
but with some of the major developed countries in
other parts of the world as well.
- It does not attempt to rank the countries
it covers. It makes no value judgment on them. Each
of the countries in the report will have to make their
own assessment of where they stand in comparison with
other countries in the region, and decide what they
should do either to stay ahead or to catch up with
the rest.
- It includes an analysis of the data of each
participating country by their respective national
experts. These analyses are to add further value to
the data. Obviously the experts’ views are their
own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations
or countries they represent.
As this book is the first in a new, important survey
project the APO has launched, there is obviously room
for further improvement. Constant reviews with the
national experts, the national productivity organizations,
and others will be undertaken to ensure that this
publication will become useful and authoritative.
For this, we welcome any comments and suggestions
you may have for us.
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to
the chief expert and the national experts for the
tremendous work they have undertaken for the project.
They have done their very best to give us a most unique
and valuable publication.
Takashi Tajima
Secretary-General,
Asian Productivity Organization,
December 2001 Tokyo, Japan
