Greece lost further ground in the global list of competitiveness of the Institute for Management Development (IMD) this year, ranking 56th among 59 countries, ahead of Ukraine, Croatia and Venezuela.

This sharp fall reflects the country’s economic condition in 2010 as a result of the implementation of a memorandum, a fiscal consolidation effort and the absence of fundamental growth measures.

Presenting the report, Nikolaos Pentzos, president of the Federation Northern Greece Industries (SBBE) said Greece lost ten positions in the economic efficiency category ranking one place ahead of Venezuela at the bottom.

In the government efficiency category, Greece ranked 54th (56th in 2009), ahead of Argentina, Venezuela and Ukraine. The country lost eight places in the business efficiency category, ranking 53rd, ahead of Russia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Venezuela and Croatia. However, Greece gained one position, ranking 32nd in the infrastructure category.

In the international list, Hong Kong, the US and Singapore led the table for 2011, followed by Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Canada, Qatar, Australia and Germany.

Pentzos said the message of this year’s list to the government was to urgently take measures to boost growth, helping businesses and the country to exit the crisis sooner. He also presented the Federation’s proposals, which were submitted to the Prime Minister in a memorandum. These included: boosting liquidity of enterprises, subsidizing labour and not unemployment by cutting employers’ social insurance contributions by 25 percent, promoting export activity by subsidizing employers’ social insurance contributions by 30 percent for export-oriented businesses for a period of five years, restructuring a bank check system and lowering taxes on real estate property transactions.