Slovakia Four Places Down in World Competitiveness Yearbook

Slovakia Four Places Down in World Competitiveness Yearbook

Bratislava, June 16 (TASR) – Slovakia keeps falling in the competitive economy ranking, moving down four places from last year in the latest World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) research and now standing in 57th place out of the 63 evaluated countries, TASR learnt from the F.A. Hayek Foundation on Tuesday.

Among European countries, Slovakia was ahead only of Croatia when it was outstripped even by Ukraine this year.

Slovakia was outdone by all its Visegrad Four partners (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) in the WCY. The most successful country in the group was the Czech Republic in 33rd place. The top three in the 2020 list, according to WCY, is Singapore, followed by Denmark and Switzerland.

“There’s a need to note that Slovakia was among the highly competitive countries in 2007-2009 (30th place), however, it failed to maintain this position over the past couple of years,” said Martin Reguli of the F.A. Hayek Foundation.

A gap between competitive power of post-communist and “Western” countries is evident, stated Reguli, giving the example of neighbouring Austria that found itself in 16th position in the ranking.

The WCY research monitors the quality of the business environment of 63 countries around the world and compares the competitiveness of their economies.

The World Competitiveness Yearbook is published by the Swiss Institute for Management Development every year in co-operation with dozens of NGOs.