Hong Kong has world’s most open economy

Tied with Singapore for first place.

The 2nd edition of the Open Markets Index commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce showed that Hong Kong and Singapore were the only two ranked as excellent in terms of overall openness (each scoring 5.5).

These two highest performing economies were the only ones listed in Category 1. Second place went to Luxembourg.

The Open Markets Index generates a balanced and reliable measurement of a country's openness to trade. It combines indicators of actual, de facto, openness of markets with those reflecting government measures considered barriers to market entry. Countries are assessed on a scale of 1 (minimum) to 6 (maximum).

The 2013 index found that the average score across the 75 countries was 3.6/5.0, indicating a slight improvement on 2011's average score of 3.5.

In general, G20 economies were found to be behind the global standard with an average aggregate score of 3.4. Of all the countries, only Canada rankED in the top 20 worldwide (19th).

Germany was 22nd; the UK 29th; France 35th and the USA 38th. G20 countries were found to perform poorest on average in terms of observed openness to trade, with 19 of the 20 scoring only average or below average on this measure.

The BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China all scored between 2.0 and 3.0, while South Africa registered an aggregate score of 3.2. One of the main causes for poor performance among these economies was restrictive trade policy regimes, with generally higher than average tariff levels.