Political stagnation drags country down
KATHMANDU, MAR 30:
Political stagnation dragged the country two positions down in the global rankings.
The International Property Rights Index (IPRI) 2012 released globally today has ranked Nepal at 102nd position from last year’s 100th. Though Nepal dropped two positions, its overall score remained constant at 4.4 out of 10 among the 130 economies included in the report.
Last year, Nepal was ranked 100th among 129 economies with a score of 4.4 points, according to the report launched in the valley by Samriddhi, the Prosperity Foundation.
According to the report, Nepal’s score has seen no changes in the International Property Rights Index 2012 from a year ago, mainly due to the legal and political stagnation. Regionally, Nepal is almost at the bottom at the 17th rank out of the 19 nations in the Asia Pacific region.
However, Nepal was in the bottom 20 per cent of the quintile in the International Property Rights Index last year but this year it has been featured in the fourth quintile mainly because other nations were not able to perform better.
Last year, Nepal had improved a little, scoring 0.4 more from 2010’s score of 4, due to an improvement in Physical Property Rights. Among the three key indicators — Legal and Political Environment, Physical Property Rights and Intellectual Property Rights — Physical Property Rights gained 0.1 point to 5.9 points from last year’s 5.8 points due to two of the three of its subcategories increasing in 2012, the report said, adding that the scores for Legal and Political Environment, and Intellectual Property Rights remained unchanged at 3.2 points and 4.1 points, respectively, as compared to last year.
The northern and southern neighbours of Nepal — Peoples Republic of China and India — scored 5.5 points ranking 57th and 5.4 points ranking 62nd, respectively, denoting them as countries with more property rights than Nepal.
Finland ranked first with a score of 8.6 points followed by Sweden at 8.5 points. Finland has retained the top spot for the sixth consecutive year, whereas in South Asia, Pakistan and Bangladesh which are below Nepal, scored 4.2 (113th) and 3.6 (125th), respectively. Sri Lanka is ranked 76th with 5 points.
At the bottom of the ranking is Nigeria with 3.9 points.
The sixth edition of the IPRI report is a publication of the Property Rights Alliance, with 67 think tanks and policy organisations in 53 countries involved in research, policy, development, education and promotion of property rights in various countries.
