Xinhua, Geneva :
The global economic recovery was in want of necessary institutions to enable trade flow, said a report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) Tuesday.
The Global Enabling Trade Report 2014 assessed and ranked the performance of 138 economies in the areas including domestic and foreign market access, efficiency and transparency of border administration, availability and quality of transport infrastructure and services, availability and use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), as well as operating environment.
In this fifth edition of the report, Singapore topped the ranking, followed by Hong Kong of China and the Netherlands, indicating that the top three have the handiest institutions, polices and services in place to facilitate the free flow of goods across borders.
The report noted that Britain (6th) led the G20 economies, followed by Germany (10th), Japan (13th), Canada (14th) and the United States (15th).
Among the BRICs, China ranked 54th out of the total 138, a few notches ahead of South Africa (59th), while Brazil (86th), India (96th) and Russia (105th) fell behind on the list, the report said.
Most of the advanced economies applied low import tariffs, but some, such as Switzerland, Norway and EU members, have complex tariff regimes that were hard to navigate and acted as barriers to trade, as the report highlighted.
It also found that for the developing and emerging economies, common barriers to trade included red tape at borders, corruption, inadequate infrastructure, and low levels of security.
The report also stressed the promising news in enabling trade flows, saying that some of these barriers, such as inefficiencies related to border clearance, can be removed relatively quickly, at a low cost and using limited political capital.
Based on these measurements, Espen Barth Eide, WEF’s Managing Director, said that this report was expected to help leaders to identify successful policies and areas for improvement.
