Romania Gains Four Places In Competitiveness Ranking

05.19.2011 ZF English

Romania climbed four positions in the world's competitiveness ranking, the so-called World Competitiveness Scoreboard, to number 50, according to the ranking published yesterday by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), one of the world's most prestigious business schools, based in Switzerland.

Ever since 1989, IMD has been publishing a global ranking of economic competitiveness yearly, which analyses the performance of several countries based on a set of criteria.

Each country is rated from 0 to 100 based on the following indicators: economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure. Based on these criteria, Romania managed to climb four places this year, to 50 out of the 59 economies analyzed, ahead of Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Ukraine and Croatia.

The progress comes after Romania stagnated at number 54 last year, after scoring 47.4 points out of 100 in terms of competitiveness.

Compared with 2010, when the Romanian economy recorded its second year of recession, this year's most upbeat forecasts suggest an around 2% GDP growth.

Romania's exit from recession was fueled in the first quarter by a rise of around 40% in exports against the similar period of last year, as well as by the increase in the value of fuel exports.