SINGAPORE: On the Hanke’s Annual Distress Index for 2025, which measures the well being of the 178 economies, Singapore took the quantity two spot, simply behind Taiwan.
The index is printed annually by Steve Hanke, a professor of utilized economics at The Johns Hopkins College, who’s also referred to as the “cash physician” for his experience in utilizing financial information from the Economist Intelligence Unit, Worldwide Financial Fund World Financial Outlook, and different sources, to take the “temperature” of economies to see how “depressing” or “wholesome” each is.
Prof Hanke’s index relies on the sum of an economic system’s unemployment price on the finish of the yr (multiplied by two), plus inflation and bank-lending charges. From this determine, the annual share change in actual GDP per capita is deducted.
Taiwan, which clinched first place for the second yr in a row, scored 2.1159, with unemployment as the key contributing issue for its rating. Singapore adopted with a rating of two.5939, and the lending price was listed because the city-state’s main contributing issue.
One other Asian economic system, Thailand, got here in third (3.1417), adopted by Eire (5.3470) and Côte d’Ivoire (6.2886).
Taiwan continues to flourish, and its actual GDP development per capita of 9.2% is what’s behind its well being. That is pushed by the excessive demand for Taiwan’s semiconductors and synthetic intelligence {hardware}. In the meantime, it has low unemployment and inflation at 3.3% and 1.3% respectively, with a bank-lending price at 3.3%.
As for the runner-up, “Singapore is a perennial contender on the happiest finish of the HAMI, and 2025 is not any exception. With a rating of two.6, Singapore’s efficiency displays near-full employment at 2.0% unemployment, well-anchored inflation at 1.2%, and strong GDP development of 4.3% per capita,” Prof Hanke wrote.
World’s most depressing
On the backside three, probably the most depressing economies are Turkey (100.9610), Sudan (225.3674), and Venezuela (556.4916).
Prof Hanke famous that Venezuela’s rating is among the many highest ever recorded on the index, and is essentially attributable to “an accelerating collapse” led to by the 2024 elections, which noticed Nicolás Maduro’s return to energy, sanctions that lower off oil revenues, and the free fall of its currencies.
Costs in Venezuela rose by a staggering 475.3% in 2025, whereas unemployment elevated to 35.1%.
Nevertheless, with the pressured elimination of Mr Maduro on Jan 3, it stays to be seen how Venezuela’s fortunes will change. /TISG
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