Portugal is the 20th best country in the world to conduct business in, according to a ranking published by Forbes magazine.
Despite the country’s precarious economic state, it was still able to place ahead of countries such as Germany, Spain or Italy.
But the spotlight fell on Ireland, which topped the ‘Best Countries for Business’ list piping New Zealand and Hong Kong to the lead position.
The magazine stressed that although Ireland received an €85 billion bailout package three years ago “to support the country’s budgetary needs and prop up the Irish banking system”, the country “still maintains an extremely pro-business environment that has attracted investments by some of the world’s biggest companies over the past decade”.
The ranking was created by grading 145 nations on 11 factors: property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance.
The magazine explained that each category was equally weighted and that the data used came from published reports by multiple organisations such as Freedom House, Heritage Foundation, Property Rights Alliance, Transparency International, World Bank and World Economic Forum.
