Estonia drops to place 43 in Bloomberg survey for doing business

Photo: Mihkel Maripuu

Estonia declined to place 43 in this year's ranking of countries by Bloomberg in terms of  how good places they are to do business, down from 34th place in the year before.

Estonia is tied for 43rd place in the new rankings with Bulgaria and Greece. While Bulgaria was 43rd also last year, Greece advanced ten places from place 53 in the table ranking 161 countries.

Latvia dropped to place 36 from 28 last year and Lithuania climbed three notches to place 37. Finland was up one place in 15 and Sweden was ranked 12th, compared with 16th a year ago.

The rankings measure markets on a scale of zero to 100 percent based on six factors: the cost of setting up business; hiring costs; the cost of moving goods; the degree of economic integration; less costs like inflation and corruption; and the readiness of the local consumer base, a category that includes the size of the middle class, household consumption and gross domestic product per capita.

Estonia's score was 57.6 in economic integration, 70.7 in the cost of setting up business, 55.8 in hiring costs, 64,8 in the cost of moving goods, 60.3 in inflation and corruption, and 61.8 in readiness of the local consumer base.

The overall score for Estonia was 62.2 percent, compared with Latvia's 63.5, Lithuania's 63.1 and Finland's 71.4.

Hong Kong secured the top position also in the new index, followed by the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Denmark, and Britain.