US financial magazine Forbes has voted Ireland as the "best country for business" in the world.
This is the first time Ireland has reached number one, moving up six positions since last year.
The rankings are determined by grading 145 different countries and factors such as innovations, taxes, technology, property rights, red tape and stock market performances.
Each category is weighted and data comes from published reports from the following organizations: Freedom House, Heritage Foundations, Property Rights Alliance, Transparency International, World Bank and World Economic Forum.
The rest of the top five in the rankings are New Zealand, Hong Kong, Denmark and Sweden. The US continued its four year slide and is now ranked at number 14 after sitting in second place in 2009. The UK are 12th, while Germany is 24th.
"Despite these economic troubles, Ireland still maintains an extremely pro-business environment that has attracted investments by some of the world's biggest companies over the past decade," says the magazine.
"Dublin has already established itself as a location for multinationals, so it has the necessary infrastructure for other companies to easily move into the country and set up shop."
Ireland remained a pro business country that continued to attract investments from some of the world's largest businesses over the last 10 years, according to the magazine.
The new ranking will give the country a healthy boost as it perpares to exit the bailout program at the end of the year.
Not to get too carried away with the accolade, Ireland were ranked number 21 out of 177 countries named on the annual ‘corruption’ index published by Transparency International yesterday, while Singaore, Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand were all in the top ten least corrupt nations.
© 2013 - European Supermarket Magazine by Alyson Kerr
