Pakistan overtakes neighbours in Economic Freedom Index 2015

source = dawn.com 

Pakistan's 'mostly unfree' economy showed improvement and has edged ahead of all its immediate neighbours in the 2015 Economic Freedom Index, published by The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation.

Pakistan was ranked at 121, out of 178 countries included in the Index, with 55.6 points

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The country shows an overall improvement of 0.4 points and is ranked 25th out of 42 countries in the Asia–Pacific region, with an overall score below the world and regional averages.

The latest ranking reflects progress in investment freedom and freedom from corruption. The improvement is largely counterbalanced by a decrease in labour freedom and business freedom.

Another key factor responsible for Pakistan's less than average ranking is the prevailing security situation which discourages foreign investments.

In its immediate neighbourhood, Pakistan fares better than 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); Iran at 171 rank with a score of 41.8 showing an improvement of 1.5 points from last year.

The index ranges from 'free' (rank 1-5), 'mostly free' (rank 6-35), 'moderately free' (rank 36-90), 'mostly unfree' (rank 91-152), repressed (rank 153-178) and 'unranked'.

Pakistan, India, and China are counted in the 'mostly unfree' category while Iran is part of the 'repressed' group, according to the index.'

The countries listed as 'free' and topping the index are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland respectively.

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.

Pakistan has also recently improved its rank to 122 in the global competitiveness index in rankings published recently by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Similarly a report on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2014 released by the Transparency International (TI) had also showed improvement in Pakistan