WASHINGTON/SINGAPORE — Singapore has retained its spot
as the world’s second least miserable country in this year’s Misery
Index.
The Republic scored a 3.1 on Bloomberg’s annual index
by virtue of its relatively low unemployment and inflation outlook
in 2017.
Singapore was denied the top spot by Thailand’s score
of 2.6 — a country which has been topping the chart for the last
three years, mainly due to its unique way of calculating
employment.
At the other end of the spectrum, Venezuela’s economic
and political problems make it the most miserable in the ranking
for the third year in a row.
The rest of the ladder features noteworthy moves by the
United Kingdom, Poland and Mexico, to name a few, mapping 2016 as
the year of political shocks and how it impacted the global
economy.
Economic woes have plagued Venezuela for years.
Sluggish oil prices, the country’s only significant export, have
fuelled a crisis that has left grocery store shelves empty,
hospitals without basic medication and violent crime rampant as
desperation leads to anger. While the country has not reported
economic data since 2015, Bloomberg’s Cafe Con Leche Index, which
aims to track inflation via the cost of a cup of coffee, shows a
price surge of 1,419 per cent since mid-August. Economists estimate
that prices will rise almost six-fold this year, according to the
median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.
A TURN FOR THE WORSE
Moving closer to Venezuela territory — though no
country even comes close to its score of nearly 500 — are a handful
of central and eastern European countries.
Poland, which experienced the biggest negative move in
the rankings, clocks in at No 28 among this year’s 65 economies,
from a rank of 45 in last year’s index of actual performance. The
higher the ranking, the more miserable the economy. Though it’s
seen a steady decline in its unemployment rate since the financial
crisis, inflation rose to 1.8 per cent in January after Poland’s
longest period of deflation on record. Similar price increases in
Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia drove large jumps in the
countries’ Misery Index rankings.
The misery also has deepened in Mexico, according to
the index. After finishing 2016 at No 38, it’s slated to rise to
31st place as inflation balloons to a forecast of 5 per cent in
2017 from an average 2.8 per cent last year. A combination of the
end of government fuel subsidies and the peso’s 11 per cent decline
against the dollar since the US presidential election in November
is pressuring prices.
The UK’s move by two notches toward more misery comes
on the heels of the Brexit vote. The popular referendum that
cemented the start of the country’s move out of the European Union
has driven the pound to a more than 30-year low, pushing up the
cost of imports and, along with it, inflation. Price growth has
been sluggish in the UK since oil prices fell at the end of
2014.
LOOKING UP
Making strides to become less miserable is a diverse
cast of characters: Norway, Peru and China.
Norway’s economic woes could at least lower prices for
consumers this year, allowing the country some room to improve on
last year’s mediocre performance and become less miserable by 18
spots. Economists see oil spending slipping in 2017 while
unemployment holds at around 4.8 per cent — the latter perhaps a
credit to the government’s spending spree.
Peru also is poised to impress with a noteworthy
13-position move toward a happier economy this year. Again, this is
good news for bad reasons: Peru was more miserable than expected in
2016 as a drought sparked food-price inflation and weak domestic
demand weighed on the labour market. Economists appear to agree
with Peru’s central bank, which sees improvement in investment and
trade on the horizon.
Rounding out the most-improved in the rankings this
year should be Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Netherlands, China, Ecuador
and Russia — each set to move down nine spots or more. A rosier
outlook in China, the world’s second-biggest economy, is a boon for
global prospects. BLOOMBERG
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