Actualidad

September 20, 2011, Delfi, Invest Lithuania

Lithuania ranks 24th in terms of the overall level of economic freedom among the world’s 141 countries after climbing up by nine positions over the year, the Fraser Institute said in its annual report.

The Canadian-based think tank, which released its 2011 Economic Freedom of the World analysis in September, gave Lithuania 7.02 points out of 10 in its assessment of the degree of economic freedom in five broad areas, including the size of governmental expenditures; legal structure and security of property rights; access to sound money; freedom to trade internationally; and regulation of credit, labour, and business. The results provided in the report are based on information and data from the year 2009.

Lithuania’s stable monetary policy was granted the highest ranking, of 9.16 points, whereas country’s regulation system gained 7.7 points, freedom to trade internationally was given 6.9 points, governmental expenditures got 6.7 points, and legal system and property rights was evaluated by 6.5 points.

“Several economies that were centrally planned for many years have made remarkable progress during the past decade. Eight of them—the Slovak Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Albania, Mongolia, and Georgia—now rank in the top 40. All of these countries now rank higher than Sweden and France, for example.” - analysts of the Fraser Institute note in the report.

Hong Kong, Singapore and the New Zealand top the list of the world’s freest economies, just like they did in the 2010 ranking. Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Venezuela and Angola were among the lowest-ranked countries in 2011.

The 2011 report reveals that the overall global index of economic freedom ebbed from 6.67 points to 6.64 points, the lowest level in almost three decades.