Slovakia was ranked 46th place among 121 countries in terms of the conditions it offers for trade, according to a report on global trading conditions in 2009 published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on July 7.
The report looked at countries’ openness towards international trade and identified barriers that have been placed on cross-border movement of goods and services.
“Slovakia was especially positively evaluated for its low customs duties,” the TASR newswire was told by Róbert Kičina, managing director of the Business Alliance of Slovakia (PAS) - a partner institution of the WEF. Kičina added, however, that the long list of items on Slovakia’s customs-duty rate table has been criticised as being somewhat over-intricate. While there are 1,491 categories in the Slovak table, Hong Kong uses only a single rate for all kinds of goods. “Despite this fact, we're in a nice, 25th place in the assessment of the handling of the customs agenda,” noted Kičina.
Slovakia was judged as achieving below-average results when it comes to the efficiency of import-export procedures and the quality of its transport infrastructure. The country enjoys certain competitive advantages, however, such as developed transport services and widespread distribution of information technologies across the country. Singapore and Hong Kong head the WEF table, followed by Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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