“Mostly Free”: Georgia improves rank in global freedom survey

Less corruption and a reduction in government spending over the past 12 months has contributed to Georgia being ranked in the top two dozen countries in a freedom survey.

This is the second year Georgia gained the "mostly free status.

Results of the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, released today by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, revealed Georgia had improved its position by 13 spots in the past year, and gained the rank of 22 of 178 global economies. The Index compared the economic freedoms of countries.

With the "Mostly Free status and a score of 72.2, Georgia improved its position in five of the 10 components of economic freedoms: Freedom in corruption, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom and labour freedom.

Its overall score is 0.4 point higher than last year. Despite this, Georgias position worsened in property rights, fiscal freedom, business freedom and trade freedom. The countrys financial freedom did not change significantly in the past 12 months.

Read more about Georgia Economy. See more from the 2014 Index.

"Over the 19 years that Georgia has been graded in the Index, its economic freedom has advanced over 28 points, the third best of any country. The impressive rise of Georgias economic freedom has been propelled by broad-based score improvements in such critical areas as regulatory efficiency and market openness, reads the report.

The report highlighted that ten of the worlds top 20 free countries were in Europe. Switerland ranked number one and Georgia ranked in twelfth position.

"A notable realignment of European countries continues to be underway in terms of advancing economic freedom, read the report.

Eighteen European countries, including Germany, Sweden, Lithuania, Georgia, Australia, the Czech Republic, Norway, Macedonia, Latvia Poland, Bulgaria and Romania recorded the highest economic freedom scores ever in the 2014 index.

Globally, 114 countries achieved their highest economic freedom scores ever in the 2014 Index.

Hong Kong remained the world's most free economy, followed by Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada, Chile, Mauritius, Ireland and Denmark.

North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Eritrea were at the bottom of the Index.

Launched in 1995, the Index evaluates countries in four broad areas of economic freedom: rule of law; regulatory efficiency; limited government and open markets. Based on an aggregate score, countries are graded and classified as "free (combined scores of 80 or higher); "mostly free (70-79.9); "moderately free (60-69.9); "mostly unfree (50-59.9); or "repressed (under 50).

Georgias freedom ranking has improved significantly over the past 24 months.