With ASKAR SHEIBANI

CEO Comtek Network Systems UK Ltd and chair the DBF

Most countries judge their economic success with the growth of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

However, GDP as an economic indicator does not represent the true value of a nation's economy and its citizens' wellbeing.

A country with a fantastic GDP could still have major issues with poverty, education, housing, health, etc.

Realising the defective nature of the GDP as an economic indicator, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), came up with a more relevant economic indicator called the Human Development Index (HDI) about 30 years ago.

HDI looks into the citizens' progress, development, happiness and economic wellbeing (http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2020_global_press_release_en.pdf).

When you take into account HDI as the most modern and relevant economic indicator, we can see how some of the small nations are performing much better than the larger ones.

For instance, Norway ranks as number one and the Republic of Ireland second in the world.

Small nations such as Norway or Ireland concentrate their economic growth on the wellbeing of their populations.

They normally have far better education systems and far fewer disadvantaged people. They don't normally get involved in wars and do not spend a massive amount of taxpayers' money on military hardware such as large aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons and fleets of submarines.

Countries such as Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland, unlike countries such as the UK, France, Russia and the USA, very rarely get involved in other nations' affairs.

These small peaceful countries have happier, more advanced societies and the life expectancy in their nations is much higher. Even with the old, outdated economic indicators, their GDP still ranks very high.

What we can learn from this is that if countries like Scotland or Wales run their economy along the lines of that of the Republic of Ireland and Iceland, they can create prosperous nations achieving similar results to the small advanced nations mentioned above.

The recent opinion polls in Scotland and Wales indicate an increase in demand for more devolved power or even independence.

I believe all the research demonstrates that if small nations are better governed and their governments are more in tune with their citizens' needs, they can achieve great economic results.

Wales has great natural resources. It has only three million population to take care of. It is strong in manufacturing, tourism, multi-media and has great ports that are open to global trade.

I believe it would be wrong to totally dismiss the idea of an independent Wales or Scotland as a naive and ill-thought fantasy without any economic merits.