|
SINGAPORE has come in second in a ranking of the world's freest economies, finishing behind Hong Kong for the 14th straight year.
Despite closing the gap on its long-time rival, the Republic was still unable to overtake Hong Kong for the top spot.
Singapore scored 87.4 in the Index of Economic Freedom, which is published annually by The Wall Street Journal and American conservative think-thank The Heritage Foundation.
This was a 0.2 percentage point improvement over its score last year and narrows the gap to Hong Kong to 2.9 percentage points.
The gap last year had widened to 3.6 percentage points, due partly to Singapore's lower scores on the degree of freedom in its financial sector and taxation.
This year, the editors of the index lauded Singapore as the top scorer in terms of business freedom and labour freedom.
Besides those two factors, the index takes into account eight other freedoms, including trade and monetary freedoms, as well as size of government and freedom from corruption.
Scores between zero and 100 are given and the ratings in each category are averaged to produce an overall score.
A total of 157 countries were surveyed.
Hong Kong had scored the highest in four of the 10 categories to top the rankings.
| 
