Macedonia is ranked on 43 place out of 184 countries in the world according to the Index of Economic Freedom 2014, jointly announced by “Foundation Heritage” and “Wall Street Journal”.
This year, Macedonia has improved the economic freedom index by 0.4 points compared to last year, which is the best score after it was included in the ranking in 2002. (The current score is 11 points better than 2002).
The report says that at Macedonia is marked improvement in nine of 10 categories under which ranking is done: business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, public spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, freedom of the labor market, right and protection of property rights and corruption.
The banking sector indicated that they dealt with the global financial crisis relatively well, but was retained and the monetary stability. As weakness is noted the legislation to protect property rights and the fight against corruption and judiciary which is assessed as susceptible to political influence and corruption.
From the countries in the region, Albania is at 54 place, Bulgaria and Romania at 62 place, Montenegro at 68, Slovenia at 74, Croatia at 87, Serbia at 95 and Bosnia and Herzegovina at 101 place.
From the analyze countries this year 114 countries made progress in economic freedom compared to last year, while Singapore, Sweden, Colombia, Poland and Turkey had best perform since its existence. Deteriorating economic freedoms were noticed at 59 countries, while 4 countries retained last year’s position.
At the top of the list of economic freedom for 2014 are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada, Chile, Mauritius, Ireland, and Denmark.
At the bottom of the list are North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Eritrea.
