Singapore Retains Ranking as World’s Best Place to do Business
Singapore has retained its ranking from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) as the best place in the world to do business. The EIU rated the city state number one out of 82 countries for its “efficient [and] open economy”, for the seventh consecutive year.
According to the EIU, the world’s top 10 business locations are Singapore followed by Switzerland, Australia, Hong Kong, Sweden, Canada, the US, Denmark, New Zealand and Finland. Rankings were based on the attractiveness of a country’s business environment as measured by the political climate, openness to foreign investment, taxes, labour market and infrastructure.
The world’s second biggest economy, China was in 50th place and its third biggest, Japan, was ranked 23rd. Other members of the ‘BRIC’ quartet of Brazil, Russia, India and China were also well down the rankings, with Brazil and India 47th and 48th respectively and Russia down at 64th.
Last month, Singapore also topped the World Bank’s ease of doing business report, which assessed 189 countries.
While the northern European countries of Sweden, Denmark and Finland made the top 10, other European Union (EU) countries were ranked lower. “The impact of the debt crisis on political stability, economic stability and financing availability has meant that EU countries remain some way off the top,” the EIU commented.