MOSCOW/KIEV, Jan. 13 - Hong Kong has topped the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom ranking conducted by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, while Ukraine dropped two positions from 2010 to 164th and Russia ranked 143rd (same as last year) out of a total of 179 countries assessed for the ranking.

A joint project of the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, ranks countries on a 1-100 scale on the basis of 10 criteria: business freedom, trade freedom, monetary freedom, government size, fiscal freedom, property rights, investment freedom, financial freedom, freedom from corruption and labor freedom. The 10 scores are averaged to produce the overall score.