The Economic Freedom of the World Report 2010 released Tuesday states that Nepal´s economic freedom score dropped to 5.54 from last year´s score of 5.68. Still Nepal´s rank improved slightly to 125 out of 141 countries, mainly as economic freedom experienced its first global downturn in a quarter of century.[break]
Fraser Institute, Canada´s leading public policy think-tank that prepared the report in cooperation with independent institutes in 80 nations, attributed Nepal´s decline in overall performance to increase in the size of the government, decrease in access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally and regulation of credit, labor and business.
“The only area where Nepal improved slightly is legal structure and security of property rights,” says a statement. Nepal´s score in this indicator climbed to 3.51, making the country rank 111, from 3.40 (112 ranking).
However, in terms of size of the government, which looks into government expenditure, taxes and public enterprises, the report says Nepal´s rank dropped to 83 from 74 of the last year. Nepal also fared badly in enhancing access to sound money.
Nepal ranked 105th position in terms of access to sound money in 2010. Last year, Nepal was in 96th position in terms of access to sound money.
On freedom to trade internationally, Nepal lost its position by one place and was ranked 112 in 2010 from 111 of 2009. Likewise, Nepal slid three places on regulation of credit, labor and business and was ranked 86 during the year.
“All these findings suggest corruption has increased in the country, people are losing income opportunities and overall living standard of the people has gone down,” said Dr Bhola Chalise of Samriddhi -- The Prosperity Foundation, the institution involved in the preparation of the report.
The Economic Freedom of the World Report uses 42 different measures to create an index, ranking countries based on policies that encourage economic freedom. According to the report, Hong Kong maintains the highest level of economic freedom worldwide, with a score of 9.05 out of 10 followed by Singapore (8.70), New Zealand (8.27), Switzerland (8.08), Chile (8.03) and the United States (7.96).
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