Malaysia jumps up Bloomberg’s rankings

Malaysia has moved up the list of most the attractive countries for business.

Jumping up four places to earn a spot at number 28 on Bloomberg’s Best Countries for Business, Malaysia scored 66.7% on the list this year.

Bloomberg takes into consideration six factors when ranking the 161 countries, including the cost of setting up business, the cost of labour and material, the cost of moving goods, the degree of economic integration, less tangible costs such as inflation and corruption and the readiness of the local consumer base.

Hong Kong, with a score of 79.6%, managed to hold on to its top ranking again this year, beating the US (77%), Japan (75.6%), the Netherlands (75.3%) and Germany (74.6%). Both the US and Japan also showed improvement this year, jumping up one and four places, respectively.

Regionally, China scored 68.5%, earning it a spot at number 24, slipping five points from last year, while Singapore moved up a notch to number eight with a score of 74%.

The rankings also hinted at a better global outlook as 15 of 30 European countries moving up in the top 50 this year. The average improvement of European countries was 35 spots, with Spain coming in 16^th with 71%, France at 14^th with 71.9% and the UK at 10^th with 73.4%.

Another notable improvement was Greece, which jumped 10 spots to 43^rd place with 62.2%.