BTI survey: More democracy in Georgia

Georgia has improved its global ranking in an international survey of 129 nations that assesses a country’s transformation towards democracy and a market economy, as well as the quality of political management.

Today leading German non-profit organisation Bertelsmann Stiftung released its 2016 Transformation Index (BTI), which evaluated developing and transitioning countries based on their current state of democracy and market economy, as well as its evolution over the past two years and the quality of governance.

Georgia’s latest report showed the country had improved in all aspects of the index, which assessed countries on ‘political transformation’, ‘economic transformation’ and more.

Since the last BTI report in 2014, Georgia’s made vast improvements in political transformation; improving 12 places from 52nd in 2014 to 40th in 2016. 

To compare with other neighbouring countries, Turkey ranked ahead of Georgia in 33rd place, while all other nearby nations ranked below Georgia; Armenia placed 74, Russia ranked 83 and Azerbaijan ranked 105.

Meanwhile for economic transformation, Georgia jumped to 53rd place – up four places from its 2014 ranking of 57th of 129 nations.

In the management index, this year BTI ranked Georgia 39th out of 129 nations, and in terms of overall status, Georgia ranked in 45th place. Both these results were above its 2014 scores of 41 and 48 respectively.

In terms of political transformation, the leading three countries in the 2016 BTI survey were Uruguay, Estonia and Taiwan, while Eritrea, Syria and Somalia were at the bottom of the report. 

See the full survey here.