Doing Business: New Europe’s Most Competitive

• New Europe Investor
• May 29, 2015

On 27th May 2015 , The International Institute for Management Development (IMD), announced the findings of its annual World Competitiveness Yearbook. The rankings look at several aspects of doing business in each country. 

A significant element in the calculations is a country’s business efficiency. This looks at how the environment encourages enterprise to perform in an innovative, profitable and responsible manner. A variety of indicators related to the productively of the labour market, business values and management practises are used to measure it.

The United States is consistently number one due to it having a strong financial sector, combined with business efficiency, innovation and a high quality infrastructure. Second and third are Hong Kong and Singapore respectively.

Of the New Europe States covered in our own chart, Latvia and Estonia have been negatively impacted compared to last year by the tensions in Russia and the Ukraine. Russia and the Ukraine themselves have been very heavily impacted.

It highlights how the increased interconnectivity of the international economy is impacted by market volatility and armed conflict in a particular region.

The biggest climber in our New Europe rankings for 2015 is Lithuania, who jumped ahead of Czech Republic and Estonia into first place.

New Europe Competitiveness Rankings

 

1st - Lithuania - Global Ranking 28, up 6 from 2014

2nd - Czech Republic - Global Ranking 29, up 4 from 2014

3rd - Estonia - Global Ranking 30, down 1 from 2014

4th - Poland - Global Ranking 33, up 3 from 2014

5th - Latvia - Global Ranking 43, down 8 from 2014

6th - Russia - Global Ranking 45, down 7 from 2014

7th - Slovakia - Global Ranking 46, down 1 from 2014

8th - Romania - Global Ranking 47, Unchanged

9th - Hungary - Global Ranking 48, Unchanged

10th - Bulgaria - Global Ranking 55, up 1 from 2014

11th - Croatia - Global Ranking 58, up 1 from 2014

12th - Ukraine - Global Ranking 60, down 11 from 2014

The full Global Index can be viewed here.