I think your false friend may actually be your true friend here. A "competitive economy" (vs. a command economy) is obviously a noun phrase and differs from say, for example, a Russian minister trying to make the Russian "economy more competitive" in international markets. In this case, competive means, as you wrote above, "to make the economy more capable of competition". It may seem like the word "capable" needs some special emphasis, but it's just assumed that when something is competitive, it's capable of competing. I don't know why, but the terms "competition-worthy" and "sea-worthy" don't sound analogous.