Egypt has dropped 14 places from 41st in 2015 to rank 55th in the 2016 Country RepTrak index, announced by the Reputation Institute.
Having a high reputation ranking is correlated with high rates of tourism, foreign direct investment (FDI), better exports, and better diplomacy.
In this day and age, with an increasingly globalised and intensely competitive world, the importance of having a strong reputation becomes great, especially for countries which seek to attract more tourism, exports, and FDI.
The Egyptian government has actively sought to boost FDI. This July, the government launched a new FDI council, in addition to reforming investment laws in an effort to facilitate the investment process in the country.
Rankings are based on a number of key drivers, the three most important of which are: an advanced economy, appealing environment, and effective governance.
First, the advanced economy can be broken down into the country’s contribution to the global culture, the high quality of products and services, technological advancement, and the value of education.
The appealing environment driver focuses on the country’s beauty, friendliness, and how enjoyable it is as a country. Such factors have a significant effect on a country’s inbound tourism.
Finally, the meaning behind effective governance is dependent on the country’s progressive social and economic policies, a favourable business environment and a country’s safety. Effective governance is considered the cornerstone of attracting FDI.
Europe dominates the list, with seven countries out of the top 10 being from western Europe. The top 10 list for 2016 in descending order are Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
The Reputation Institute is the world’s leading reputation-based research advisory firm, founded by Charles Fombrun and Cees van Riel in 1997. The Reputation Institute’s RepTrak research is the world’s largest and highest quality normative reputation benchmark database.