Shire of Roebourne Local Planning Strategy

Shire of Roebourne Local Planning StrategyTechnical Report A1: Economic Development Strategy4 Competitive PositionTo get a better idea of how to achieve the Pilbara Cities vision, an investigation of the competitive positionof the Pilbara and of the Shire is instructive.A range of factors largely explain differences in regions’ economic prosperity and growth patterns. Theseinclude differences in resource endowments, the size of markets, demography and population dispersion,levels of human capital, the extent and incidence of taxation and the level and quality of publicexpenditure, as well as competition and market settings. It is therefore useful to investigate prospectsfor the region through the prism of its economic performance and competitiveness relative to otherregions or wider areas.A competitiveness index developed by the Regional Australia Institute and drawing on the WorldEconomic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report provides some guidance 13 . The 10 themes of regionalcompetitiveness are distinguished between: Those that are essentially fixed in nature and cannot easily be adjusted (such as thepresence of natural resources or market size); and Those that can be changed by policy decisions, either directly through a decision to build,invest or change (such as institutions and infrastructure), or at least influenced by policy(such as human capital and labour market efficiency).An assessment of the Pilbara on these parameters provides an indication of the areas of comparativestrength in the region and those that need attention or strategies to deal with them.13Regional Australia Institute: Insight Regional Australia,http://insight.regionalaustralia.org.au/#30