Kazakhstan placed 70th in Best Countries for Business 2014 ranking
ASTANA. January 23. KAZINFORM Kazakhstan has been ranked in the 70th place of "Best Countries for Business 2014" compiled by Bloomberg Rankings for the third year in a row.
The agency performed careful analysis of the world's most attractive countries for business based on the 2013 results and placed Kazakhstan between Ghana and Cape Verde.
According to Bloomberg Rankings, Kazakhstan boasts 'enormous oil and gas reserves and plentiful supplies of other minerals and metals, such as uranium, copper, and zinc. Extractive industries have been and will continue to be the engine of Kazakhstan's growth, although the country is pursuing diversification strategies'. Indeed, Kazakhstan has recently shifted its focus to developing such sectors as transport, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, petrochemicals and food processing.
Kazakhstan's closest neighbor and ally - Russia rests on the 43rd spot significantly improving its position compared to 2013.
As for the top three spots, Hong Kong leads the ranking again, followed closely by Canada that skyrocketed from the last year's sixth place to the Top 3 this year. The U.S. plunged to the third spot. The degree of economic integration; the cost of setting up a business; the cost of labor and materials; the cost of moving goods; less tangible costs like inflation and the amount of corruption; and the health of its consumer base are the six criteria used to analyze countries' business attractiveness.