OREANDA-NEWS. May 21, 2010. Estonia has climbed one notch to 34th position in the competitiveness ranking of the Lausanne, Switzerland-based international business school IMD.

At the top of this year's scoreboard is Singapore, last year's third, followed by Hong Kong in 2nd like last year, while last year's leader United States dropped to 3rd.

Five out of the 20 most competitive nations are Asian.

Of countries in Estonia's neighborhood, Finland and Sweden ranked among the top 20. Sweden maintained its 6th position but Finland dropped to 19th from 9th in 2009.

Lithuania moved from 31st to 43rd and Latvia was not among the countries surveyed. Russia placed 51st.

IMD's partner in Estonia, the Institute of Economic Research (EKI), observed that Estonia's rise is based on business leaders' assessments of the business environment which in March were considerably improved in comparison with the bottom of the crisis a year ago. The statistical indicators of 2009 used in the rankings were meanwhile markedly weaker than a year earlier.