Nepal drops on economic freedom ranking

KATHMANDU, Sept 17: A global report on Economic Freedom 2009 has ranked Nepal at the 129th position among 141 countries, indicating that the country lacks adequate policy encouragement, access to money and freedom to trade, which are vitally important to build prosperity and reduce poverty. [break]



Nepal´s rank for the year is down by a spot, as the Fraser Institute -- Canada´s leading economic think tank that produces the report -- had ranked Nepal at the 128th position in its last year´s report.




To prepare the report released on Wednesday, the Fraser Institute had measured policies that encourage economic freedom of the countries across the globe under 42 broad indicators. It had mainly measured economic freedom in five different areas -- size of the government, legal structure and security of property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation of credit, labor and business.



Downslide in Nepal´s rank has been attributed to drop in Nepal´s scores on two of those five key components, compared to last year. According to the report, country´s performance mainly deteriorated on fronts like security of property rights and freedom to trade internationally.



However, Nepal recorded improvement on areas like size and capacity of the government to respond to people´s needs, access to sound money and regulation of credit, labor and business.



Samriddhi - The Prosperity Foundation, a member of the World Economic Freedom Network that released the report in Nepal, cautioned that the country could further slide down, referring to the global economic slowdown and fewer steps taken by the government to fight off its adverse impact.



The report has ranked Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand respectively in top three positions. Zimbabwe once again has been ranked lowest on economic freedom, followed by Myanmar, Angola, and Venezuela. India and China -- Nepal´s southern and northern neighbor -- has been ranked at 86th and 82nd positions respectively.



The 2009 report was based on data of 2007, the most recent year for which comprehensive data was available, says a statement.



The research shows that individuals living in countries with high levels of economic freedom enjoy higher levels of prosperity, greater individual freedoms and longer life spans. This year´s report has included new research that examined the likely impact of global recession on levels of economic freedom. "It suggests that economic freedom may decline in the short term in response to crises, but over a longer time, economic freedom will increase," says the statement.

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