According to a report released by Canada's Frasier Institute, The Hong Kong Center for Economic Research and the Cato Institute in the US on January 11, Hong Kong and Singapore are listed as the world's freest economies.

During his comments on this report, Zeng Yinquan, chief of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's Finance Department, expressed that it reconfirms that the free and open market economy was operating smoothly in Hong Kong under the "one country, two systems," which is quite encouraging. The report gave Hong Kong high marks in some of main criteria, such as size of government, structure of the economy, monetary policies, freedom of trade, openness to international markets and so forth. It's important for Hong Kong to maintain its superiority in these areas in order to ensure that it has the freest economy and its status as an international financial center.

The economic freedom index in the Economic Freedom of the World report was calculated under the guidance of US Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. This index is the most objective and accurate of its kind in measuring the degree of the economic freedom.

The report is available on the Internet here