THE F.A. Hayek Foundation confirmed that Slovakia had moved up four places to stand 30th in a ranking of 55 countries evaluated according to the competitiveness of their economies.
The foundation compiled the ranking in cooperation with the Swiss Institute for Management Development (IMD), the SITA newswire wrote.
IMD and the foundation listed the following as Slovakia's greatest challenges: improving the effectiveness of law enforcement, better interconnection between the labour market and the education system, higher flexibility of the labour market, unification of tax collection and compulsory insurance payments, higher effectiveness in health care, and development of infrastructure for transport, IT and research and development.
"This government is in the middle of an election term," said Ivan Švejna, chairman of the F. A. Hayek Foundation supervisory board. "That means statistically processed results or trends can be attributed to it."
Švejna said the country is prosperous, its economy has been well guided and that the standard of living is increasing. The current government did not make any crucial mistakes from the macroeconomic point of view, he said, but added that caution is still called for in the future.
The United States topped the ranking. Singapore came in second, followed by Hong Kong.
Slovakia still lags behind the Czech Republic, which placed 28th, and Austria which was 14th.
