Bulgaria has lost two spots to finish 55th on the competitiveness ranking of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), covering 59 key countries.

According to its website, the IMD is an independent non-profit foundation located in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The World Competitiveness Yearbook is widely considered to be the most comprehensive up-to-date ranking of how industrialized and emerging nations are managing their governments, businesses, people and infrastructure.

Its annual report on selected countries analyses and ranks their ability to create and maintain an environment that sustains the competitiveness of enterprises. The foundation measures economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure, and its judgment is based on 327 distinct criteria.

Two-thirds of the weighting is made up of hard data while the rest is based on responses of 4 000 executives surveyed.

The United States, which lost the title as the most competitive country last year for the first time in decades to Singapore, retook the top spot, sharing it with Hong Kong at 100 points, followed by Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland.

Taiwan, Canada, Qatar, Australia and Germany rounded out the top 10.