SOFIA (Bulgaria), Nov. 8 (SeeNews) – The economies of Slovenia, Greece and Bulgaria are the most resilient to external shocks among the countries of South Eastern Europe (SEE), the South-Eastern European (SEE) said on Monday. Berlin agency Scope Ratings.

At the other end of the rankings, North Macedonia and Albania are the most vulnerable to external risks among countries in the region, according to Scope’s annual External Vulnerability and Resilience Ranking Report.

“The performance of South-Eastern European countries in our latest external risk ranking is mixed. Overall, the relatively weak resilience of the region’s external sector weighs on the overall performance in the 2021 ranking, especially in cases like Croatia and Romania. However, there are outliers such as Slovenia that rank highly overall in a global comparison. Bulgaria scores well on one of the two pillars of the framework – external vulnerability – due to current account surpluses and the lev’s limited volatility, ”Levon Kameryan and Dennis Shen, co-authors of the lev, told SeeNews. report.

Bulgaria and Croatia’s risk to external resilience has diminished after their successful entry into Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) II in 2020, according to the report.

“An important factor supporting the rankings of Bulgaria and Croatia is their respective entry into ERM II and early adoption of the euro in the medium term, which would significantly reduce currency risk,” they noted.

The Romanian economy is weakened by large current account deficits filled mainly by debt-creating inflows, according to the report.

Globally, Switzerland, Malta and Japan lead the Scope 2021 external risk rankings. Lebanon, Zambia and Angola are at the bottom of this year’s ranking, which compares the external shock risks of 95 countries.

“Many economies are struggling to fully recover from the shock of Covid-19. Rising energy costs and supply chain bottlenecks are helping to reignite inflation as central banks seek to withdraw emergency stimulus, ”Kameryan and Shen told SeeNews .

Scope’s annual external vulnerability and resilience rankings assess economies on the underlying vulnerabilities to a potential balance of payments crisis and the degree of underlying resilience of economies when exposed to such an external crisis, with an overall ranking that combines vulnerability and resilience in a crisis.

The 2021 external risk rankings of SEE countries are as follows: