Best countries for business: Hungary in the lead again in terms of monetary freedom

Even Brexit could not dethrone the United Kingdom, leading the Forbes list of investment-friendly countries in the last few years. Their secret is innovation, excellent labour market and the absence of bureaucracy. Hungary became the best again in only one subcategory; most of the countries in the region are ahead of us.

Forbes has been publishing its Best Countries for Business list annually for 13 years now. They ranked 161 countries in accordance with the following criteria: ownership, the degree of innovation, the tax system, corruption, development of technology and infrastructure, political risks, size of the market, living standards, degree of freedom (personal, trading and monetary), the labor market, bureaucracy and the protection of investors.

The journal took into consideration the report of The World Bank when they ranked the tax system, bureaucracy and the protection of investors. Regarding taxes, Hong Kong is the number one, Venezuela is the last, while the UK is only on the 37^th place. Kazakhstan is the best protector of investors while bureaucracy is the most bearable in New-Zealand; Venezuela remained the last in this measure as well as concerning monetary freedom.

Hungary became the 1^st in this category for the third time in a row, although we finished only on the 40^th place in the overall rankings, just ahead of Romania and Greece.

This result is not surprising, as the Hungarian prime interest rate is 0.9% since May 2016, while most of the other central banks started tightening the standard interest rate (the Hungarian National Bank took many efforts to vitalise credits, and by this, the economy as well).

However, in terms of investor protection, Hungary is not even in the top 100.

Romania and Bulgaria, who are in worse positions in the overall view, have a better result than Hungary. This is how the ranking of Eastern European countries looks like:

27. Lithuania
28. Estonia
29. Czech Republic
30. Slovenia
31. Poland
32. Latvia
33. Slovakia
34. HUNGARY
35. Romania
36. Bulgaria

Germany is unbeatable in innovation, while infrastructure is the most developed in Singapore. Fun fact: the UK is the only country which made it to the top 30 in all categories.

Check out the full list here and make sure to take a look at Forbes’ list of the top 50 richest Hungarians in 2018 as well!

Source: Forbes.hu