Fraser Institute published its “Economic Freedom of the World - 2020 Annual Report” in which it uncovers economic freedom scores for the year 2018 and measures the extent to which policies and institutions in 162 countries and territories across the globe foster this freedom. In fact, Fraser Institute’s index of economic freedom pivots around five major pillars, namely: size of government, legal system and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation of credit, labor, and business. The value of the index is accordingly calculated by averaging the related scores on a scale from zero to ten. In this context, Lebanon was assigned a score of 6.88 in the 2018 index of economic freedom, compared to a score of 6.97 in the 2017 index, ranking as such 83^rd in the world, down from the 75^th place it occupied a year before. More specifically, the report showed a deterioration in 3 of Lebanon’s sub-indices, scoring 8.29 in the size of government sub-index, 8.99 in the sound money sub-index, 6.74 in the freedom to trade internationally sub-index. Lebanon, however, showed improvement in the other two sub-indices where it scored 6.47 in the regulation sub-index and 3.89 in the legal system and property rights sub-index.

When compared to its regional peers, Lebanon ranked in the joined-fourth position along with Qatar in economic freedom, faring better than Oman (score: 6.79), Morocco (score: 6.70), and Kuwait (score: 6.60), among others, yet trailing the United Arab Emirates (score: 7.05), Bahrain (score: 7.16), and Jordan (7.62).