India Ranks 128th in The List of Freest Economies In The World


BENGALURU: Over two decades of Liberalization and series of economic reforms year after year are not good enough to make India one among the freest economies in the world. India witnessed leaders who are eminent economist by profession but none of their efforts have proved fruitful. It is time that India stops building walls against investors and economic efficiency that would add a lot of inputs to India’s growth prospects.

The Index of Economic Freedom, 2015, published by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation highlights the broad policy areas in the economic freedom with respect to various countries around the world. Aspects such as property rights, freedom from corruption, fiscal freedom, government freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom, trade freedom, investment freedom and financial freedom are taken into consideration to calculate their respective freedom scores. Unfortunately India stands at 128th position with a very poor score of 54.6.

Thirty-seven countries, including Taiwan, Israel, Poland and Colombia, achieved their highest-ever scores. Rediff charted out the freest economies in 2015, here are the quick details of these countries:

Hong Kong: One of Asian Tigers, Hong Kong triumphs the list of freest economies with a freedom score of 89.6, which is in fact 0.5 points less than it’s precious score. The study says that, “Although Hong Kong continues strongly to maintain the features of an economically free society; the city’s waning institutional uniqueness has placed it at critical crossroads.” In spite of Hong Kong being the most liberal economy the study says that its perceived corruption outweighs the minor improvements in business freedom, labor and fiscal freedom. Corruption is what is placing the country on the “critical crossroads.”

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