Finland ranks top in preventing illicit trade index

Finland has the best environment for preventing illicit trade, according to The Global Illicit Trade Environment Index released on Thursday by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The Index, commissioned by The Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT), looks at 84 economies. Finland tops the government policy category and ranks 5th in the supply and demand category, said a press release.

Europe is the best performing region of the four in the index, scoring twelve points higher on its overall score than the next closest region, Asia. Europe tops all categories in the index, including the customs environment, where it scores 79.0, far above than the three other regions.

The Asia-Pacific, which includes 21 economies, comes second, ahead of the 19 economies in the Americas region and ten economies of Middle East and Africa. No region outside of Europe performs particularly well, with average scores ranging from a low 42.0 in supply and demand for the Americas to 63.0 in customs environment for the Asia-Pacific. The Middle East and Africa region is dragged down by the presence of Libya and Iraq, two almost-lawless economies that score at or near the bottom of all the categories and indicators.

The main white paper also looks at the results of key indicators related to corruption, cyber security and intellectual property protections, and transparency and human trafficking. In these and other areas of illicit trade, the results of the index are dispiriting, with the overall average score being just 60.0; the supply and demand and transparency trade categories were generally the worst in the index. The paper is published along with a series of a regional paper and a brief focused on free trade zones.

“More can and should be done when it comes to combatting illicit trade, especially because it helps to fund the operations of transnational organised crime and international terrorist organisations. Governments around the world have a variety of policy measures at their disposal, including some very low-hanging fruit like enforcing rules and regulations that are on the books with regards to monitoring and enforcement of free trade zones and improving their international reporting of data on drugs, human trafficking and intellectual property theft,” said Chris Clague, the author of the main white paper.

The index, online data visualisation tool and the various reports that are being published can all be found at illicittradeindex.eiu.com