Ukraine has left the third quartile and is once again among the most economically unfree countries in the world, as evidenced by the Canadian Fraser Institute’s report “Economic Freedom in the World”.”
How the indicator was measured
The report’s authors measure economic freedom by five indicators: government size, rule of law and protection of property rights, reliability of money, freedom of international trade, and regulation of the labor and business markets.
Ukraine’s place in the ranking
Ukraine was ranked 150th among 165 countries and territories in the updated ranking, down from 113th last year.
This drop is due to the fact that the ranking, for the first time, takes into account data collected after the start of the full-scale invasion. The Bendukidze Center said in a press release that this predictably had a negative impact on Ukraine’s performance.
Next to Ukraine, countries such as Yemen, Libya, Iran, Argentina, Myanmar, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela are at the bottom of the ranking table.
Ukraine’s score on critical components of economic freedom
- Size of government: deterioration from 7.29 to 5.83.
- Legal system and property rights: deterioration from 4.58 to 4.37.
- Access to reliable money: deterioration from 6.39 to 4.68.
- Freedom of international trade: deterioration from 6.68 to 6.05.
- Regulation of the labor market and business: deterioration from 5.37 to 4.67.
Leaders of the rating
Hong Kong once again topped the ranking, pushing Singapore to second place. Switzerland, New Zealand, and the United States traditionally follow them. The Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — have also been in the first quartile for many years.
Overall, the global average economic freedom index continues to decline.
Matthew Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and one of the report’s authors, said the level of global economic freedom peaked in 2019, but over the next three years, it declined, which is unprecedented in more than 25 years of measuring economic freedom.
In 2021, Ukraine left the group of economically unfree countries for the first time. At the time, Ukraine ranked 112th out of 165 jurisdictions.
