NZ holds fourth place as freest economy
Higher government spending failed to arrest a slight gain in New Zealand’s ranking as one of the most economically free in the world.
Higher government spending failed to arrest a slight gain in New Zealand’s ranking as one of the most economically free in the world.
The 2010 Wall Street Journal-Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom maintains New Zealand’s fourth ranking behind Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.
While New Zealand’s score of 82.3 was o.2 points up on the previous year, Australia’s slipped by 0.1 point.
Hong Kong, with a score of 89.7, held the first place for the 17th year and was well above the world average of 59. Another “capitalist” territory of China, Macau, was fifth, while China itself ranked a lowly 135 out of the 183 economies surveyed.
"Hong Kong, one of the world's most competitive financial and business centres, demonstrated a high degree of resilience during the global financial crisis," the report said.
Freedom in trade and finance was the biggest boost to Hong Kong's ranking, while investment freedom and property rights, business and monetary freedom all scored highly.
The US fell to ninth freest from eighth last year and the UK slipped to 16th place from 11th in 2010 due to more policy responses to the global economic turmoil, the report added.
New Zealand was weakest in government spending among the 10 criteria, with a score of just 49.3 compared with an average of 63.9. The NZ score was down two points, offset by gains in other criteria.
North Korea ranked 179th, at the bottom of the list with a score of 1.0, followed by Zimbabwe in 178th place with a score of 22.1. Afghanistan, Iraq, Liechtenstein and Sudan were unranked.
Rank Economy Overall score (out of 100)
1 Hong Kong 89.7
2 Singapore 87.2
3 Australia 82.5
4 New Zealand 82.3
5 Switzerland 81.9
6 Canada 80.8
7 Ireland 78.7
8 Denmark 78.6
9 USA 77.8
10 Bahrain 77.7
NBR staff
Fri, 14 Jan 2011
Fri, 14 Jan 2011
© All content copyright NBR. Do not reproduce in any form without permission, even if you have a paid subscription.
NZ holds fourth place as freest economy
11577