Pakistan ranks at 121, out of 178 countries, on the 2015 Economic Freedom Index published by the The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation, Washington’s No. 1 think tank.
Pakistan is ranked 25th out of 42 countries in the Asia–Pacific region, and its overall score is below the world and regional averages.
The Index covers 10 freedoms – from property rights to entrepreneurship – in 186 countries and categorises countries in five groups: free, mostly free, moderately free, mostly unfree and repressed.
With a ‘mostly unfree’ economy, Pakistan; with 55.6 points, has been ranked higher than all of its immediate members in the index.
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Its score has increased by 0.4 point since last year, reflecting improvements in investment freedom and freedom from corruption that are largely counterbalanced by deterioration in labour freedom and business freedom. The report also cites poor security as a key factor that discourages foreign investment in the country.
Neighbouring India ranked at 128 with 54.6 points; a 1.1 point decrease from last year, China at 139 with 52.7 points; improvement of 0.2 points from last year, Iran at 171 rank with a score of 41.8 and an improvement of 1.5 points from last year.
The countries listed as ‘free’ and topping the index are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland.
Similarly, countries in the ‘repressed’ category featured at the the bottom of the list include Eritrea (174), Zimbabwe (175), Venezuela (176), Cuba (177) and North Korea (178).
Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Liechenstein were not covered in the ranking due to lack of sufficient comparable or reliable data or the ongoing political turmoil in the countries that has resulted in deterioration in the quality of publicly available economic statistics.
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