Lithuania has climbed six positions to lead the Central and Eastern Europe region in the IMD World Competitiveness Centre’s annual global competitiveness ranking. IMD, a leading international business school based in Switzerland, uses over 300 criteria to rank countries’ competitiveness in its annual report. In this year’s ranking Lithuania comes in 28th position globally, rising from 34th in 2014.
Professor Arturo Bris, director of the IMD Global Competitiveness Centre, told Lithuanian business journal VŽ that the country’s significant jump is an impressive achievement. ‘Lithuania has improved its position considerably,’ he explained. ‘It is one of the countries to have climbed most in the list; six places in a year is a really impressive result. Italy was the only country to have made greater progress.’
In terms of the region, Lithuania was the only Baltic state to improve its position this year. It has leapfrogged Estonia, whose ranking has dropped one place from 30th to 31st, and has outperformed Latvia, which has fallen 8 places to 43rd globally.