Egypt improves ranking on Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom

Egypt has moved up to 10^th in the Arab world and 130^th worldwide in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom of 178 countries, the Washington-based think tank said on Thursday.

The title of the world’s freest economy for 2021 was retained by Singapore for the second year in a row.

According to the 2021 index published on Thursday, the foundation said Egypt’s overall score has increased by 1.7 points, with improvements in 9 of the 12 categories of economic freedom.

It added: “the country improved its economic freedom score this year for the third year in a row. To maintain that momentum, the government should pursue policy reforms to reduce public debt and upgrade institutional performance to strengthen the three rule-of-law indicators: property rights, judicial effectiveness, and government integrity.

“Business freedom has been facilitated by abolition of the mandate to obtain a certificate of non-confusion (of the company name) when starting a business and by improving one-stop-shop efficiency. The electricity supply has become more reliable.”

Below are the rankings of Arab countries in the Index of Economic Freedom: