As such, the Baltic country is now considered to be in the same economic category as countries like Germany, the USA and Japan, Invest Lithuania reports.
The IMF classifies a country's economy based on its per capita GDP, its export diversification and its degree of integration into the global financial system. The IMF expects Lithuania's GDP to grow by 2.8% this year and by 3.2% in 2016. By contrast, the organisation has forecast Eurozone GDP growth rates of 1.5% for 2015 and 1.6% for 2016.
According to the IMF, these figures indicate that Lithuania no longer belongs in the category of emerging markets which includes the BRICs (namely Brazil, Russia, India and China).
In another piece of good news for the rapidly developing country, Lithuania climbed 6 spots to 28th place (out of 144) in the IMD's annual World Competitiveness Ranking and now leads the CEE region. The World Competitiveness Ranking is an annually published index that evaluates business conditions across the globe. Lithuania scored especially highly in the rankings in the fields of education and technology.
