September 4 (SeeNews) - Six countries of Southeast Europe (SEE) ranked higher in terms of competitiveness this year, while Slovenia, Moldova, Albania, Serbia and Turkey were perceived as less competitive, the World Economic Forum said.
The eleven Southeast European states ranked between 44th and 101th among 148 countries included in the Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014, published by the World Economic Forum on its website.
Their scores ranged from 3.77 to 4.45, where 10.0 indicates the highest level of global competitiveness and 1.0 indicates the lowest one.
Slovenia, Albania and Serbia dropped six positions each, while Moldova and Turkey went down by two and one position, respectively.
Macedonia climbed the most, by seven positions, among the SEE countries. Croatia was six positions higher while Bulgaria and Montenegro each went five steps up.
Corruption, access to financing, bureaucracy and government policy instability were among the most problematic obstacles for doing business in all SEE countries.
The report assesses the ability of countries to provide high levels of prosperity to their citizens, depending on how productively a country uses available resources. It uses a global competitiveness index which measures factors such as macroeconomic stability, infrastructure, labour market efficiency, market size, business and financial market sophistication and technological readiness.
Following are the competitiveness rankings and scores of the SEE countries:
Country |
2013-2014 ranking |
2013-2014 score |
2012-2013 ranking |
2012-2013 score |
Slovenia |
62 |
4.25 |
56 |
4.34 |
Bulgaria |
57 |
4.31 |
62 |
4.27 |
Montenegro |
67 |
4.20 |
72 |
4.14 |
Romania |
76 |
4.13 |
78 |
4.07 |
Macedonia |
73 |
4.14 |
80 |
4.04 |
Croatia |
75 |
4.13 |
81 |
4.04 |
Moldova |
89 |
3.94 |
87 |
3.94 |
Bosnia |
87 |
4.02 |
88 |
3.91 |
Albania |
95 |
3.85 |
89 |
3.91 |
Serbia |
101 |
3.77 |
95 |
3.87 |
Turkey |
44 |
4.45 |
43 |
4.45 |