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Greece is comparable with Third World countries levels of development that threw it on the 83^rd place in terms of competitiveness, according to a survey made among 139 countries. The country of islands fell 12 positions down in the list of the World Economic Forum. It ended up last among its European partners and it turned out that the conditions for the development of competitiveness in sunny Greece are even worse than those in Rwanda, El Salvador, Namibia and Kazakhstan.

Tension in macroeconomic conditions in combination with the almost not functioning institutions and low efficiency of markets explain its poor position in this relative list, as stated in the report for the competitiveness in 2010-2011.

Thorns of the Greek economy are the bureaucracy, corruption and inflexible labour relationships. In more detail, the problems that prevent the development of good business environment in Greece include also distrust in politicians, giving bribes, poor spending of state money, poor quality of the education system, lengthy procedures for opening a company and the lack of investment in research and development.

Concerning the cadres on the labour market in the country, the authors of the report characterized them as "well trained" and that "they wish to apply new technologies in their work to improve productivity." Achilles' heel is the macroeconomic stability or rather instability as Greece fell to 123^rd position, which is twenty positions down compared to the last year. The top ten countries with the best environment for business development are Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, USA, Germany, Japan, Finland, Holland, Denmark and Canada.
 
So, the Greek economy appears quite uncompetitive compared with that of Malaysia (26 place), Thailand (38 place), Turkey (61 place), Guatemala (78 place) and Rwanda (80 place). Besides the overall negative image of Greece with regard to its position among the 139 countries, the country occupies the last places according to the various indices of the report, the sum of which finally draws the general picture of the particular country. The fact that Greece takes the last place in many of these indices proves that the level of competitiveness depends not only on keeping prices down and on wage reductions. It largely depends on the quality of institutions in the country and the state of society – people’s health, education, etc.