Ireland has risen from seventh to third place in an "Index of Economic Freedom" and now ranks third in the world behind Hong Kong and Singapore. The US is in sixth place ahead of Britain, writes Joe Carroll in Washington.
The index drawn up annually by the Heritage Foundation in Washington with the Wall Street Journal ranks the world's economies according to 50 economic variables in 10 broad categories.
These include banking and finance, capital flows and foreign investment, monetary and trade policy, wages, prices and government intervention in the economy.
Ireland's surge in economic freedom is attributed to "a greater openness to foreign investment and the freedom of its banking and financial sector". But the index editors warn that Ireland may slip next year because of price controls imposed by the Government in response to the EU's monetary policy.
The editors note that the EU has "also pushed Ireland to moderate its free-market practices". The 161 countries in the index, now in its seventh year, are classified under the headings of: free, mostly free, mostly unfree and repressed. Four EU states are in the "free" category; Ireland, Britain, Luxembourg and Netherlands. The editors say the good news is that economic freedom continues to grow worldwide but the bad news is that unfree economies still outnumber free ones.
