You're reading: Ukraine ranks among world’s most miserable economies

Ukraine ranks among the top 10 nations in Bloomberg’s Misery Index, which tracks inflation and unemployment outlooks for 66 countries, the news agency reported on Feb. 15.

It isn’t all doom and gloom, though.

While Ukraine this year ranked 7th in the list of the world’s most miserable economies, it has slightly improved on its 2017 position, when it was 5th. Thailand and Singapore again claimed the “least miserable” status.

The two main factors dragging down Ukraine’s economic performance in 2017 were the trade blockade with the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas and botched judicial reform, according to economist Andreas Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

In February 2017, leading lawmakers in the 26-member opposition Samopomich Party instigated a blockade against trade with the occupied territories in the Donbas, which disrupted production in heavy industry. Aslund believes this alone could cost Ukraine around 2 percent of its GDP in the first half of the year.

Ukraine’s unsuccessful fight with corruption has also kept investors away, with many domestic and foreign ones seeing their confidence in Ukraine dip due to stagnated judicial reforms.

Artem Sytnyk, who heads the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, recently said that the launch of an anti-corruption court in Ukraine in 2018 will be a test of the Ukrainian authorities’ political will to fight corruption.

“Were close to the point of no return in the anti-corruption reform. Either in 2018 a court that will be able to review these cases (related to corruption) will be established … or Ukraine will confirm that we don’t have the political will to fight against corruption,” Sytnyk said at a joint news conference with Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of the specialized anti-corruption prosecutor’s office in Kyiv on Feb. 8.