Macedonia Tops Region's Economic Freedom Index

Photo by: Julien Jorge

Macedonia ranks in 43rd place out of 177 countries listed in the index, placed among countries in the third tier of the list that are described as moderately free.

Most countries in the region share the same tier of moderately free economies. Albania is 58, followed by Romania, 59, Bulgaria, 60, Montenegro, 70, Slovenia, 76 and Croatia, 78.

One tier below, among the mostly unfree countries, is Serbia, placed 94, Bosnia and Herzegovina, at 103, and Greece, in 117th place.

Kosovo is not ranked.

The index measures ten components of economic freedom, assigning a grade to each using a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum freedom.

The components are: property rights, freedom from corruption, fiscal freedom, government spending, and business, labour, monetary, trade, investment and financial freedom.

Worldwide, Hong Kong tops the ranking for the 19th year, followed by Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland. These are the only countries described in the index as free.

The top ten also include Canada, Chile, Mauritius, Denmark and the United States, all placed in the second tier as mostly free.

Zimbabwe, Cuba and North Korea are at the bottom of the list.