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Azerbaijan is not among 52 countries in Financial Development Index

11 September 2008 13:30 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Vahab Rzayev â€“ APA-Economics. Azerbaijan is not among 52 countries in the World Economic Forum’s inaugural Financial Development Index released on Tuesday.
The rankings consider several factors such as business environment, financial stability, size and depth of capital markets, and ease of access to capital.
The rankings are based on over 120 variables spanning institutional and business environments, financial stability, and size and depth of capital markets, among other factors, in assessing the complex financial systems of the 52 countries studied.
The US came at the top of the list followed by the UK, Germany, Japan, Canada and France respectively.
Other countries in the Top 10 include Switzerland, Hong Kong SAR, Netherlands and Singapore.
Of the CIS countries included in the index, Russia is at 36th, Kazakhstan 45th and Ukraine 51st.
"The Financial Development Report 2008, which promotes the full potential of financial systems to drive economic growth in developing countries, provides a ranking of 52 of the world’s leading financial systems through which countries can benchmark their performance and evaluate priorities for reform," the World Economic Forum said in a press statement.
The report draws data from a variety of publicly available sources as well as the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the World Economic Forum. (The highest score is 7)

	*Countries*	*Ranking*
1	United States	5.85
2	United Kingdom	5.83
3	Germany	5.28
4	Japan	5.28
5	Canada	5.26
6	France	5.25
7	Switzerland	5.23
8	Hong Kong	5.23
9	Netherlands	5.22
10	Singapore	5.15
11	Australia	4.98
12	Spain	4.90
13	Sweden	4.75
14	Ireland	4.72
15	Norway	4.66
16	United Arab Emirates	4.61
17	Belgium	4.56
18	Austria	4.55
19	Korea Rep.	4.55
20	Malaysia	4.48
21	Finland	4.45
22	Italy	4.38
23	Israel	4.14
24	China	4.09
25	South Africa	4.00
26	Kuwait	3.93
27	Saudi Arabia	3.90
28	Bahrain	3.89
29	Thailand	3.82
30	Chile	3.79
31	India	3.63
32	Panama	3.61
33	Hungary	3.53
34	Pakistan	3.46
35	Czech Republic	3.43
36	Russian Federation	3.40
37	Egypt	3.32
38	Indonesia	3.31
39	Turkey	3.30
40	Brazil	3.28
41	Poland	3.27
42	Slovak Republic	3.25
43	Mexico	3.21
44	Colombia	3.21
45	Kazakhstan	3.13
46	Peru	3.06
47	Argentina	3.04
48	Philippines	3.03
49	Vietnam	3.03
50	Nigeria	2.76
51	Ukraine	2.73
52	Venezuela	2.71

Azerbaijanâ€™s not inclusion in the list seem natural as the financial sector, especially the banking sector in this country has no such real strong role in the economy.
Besides, we canâ€™t speak of ease of access to capital in the country. In general, the financial sector remains undeveloped and lags behind.