Bulgaria is 51st in prosperity in the world, shows this year's edition of Legatum Prosperity Index. It is based on the results in 9 areas surveyed in 149 countries around the world, where 96% of mankind lives and are responsible for 99% of the world's gross domestic product.

This puts our country in front of South Africa, but behind the Republic of Suriname.

The highest is our ranking in terms of the state of the environment and its conservation - we are the 35th in the world. But in regards to "social capital" - social relations between people in the country, civic activity and social norms we are close to the bottom - we are 110.

Our positions are bad in the business environment where we are 80th, and 79th in the healthcare sector. The effectiveness of our rulers, democracy and respect for the legal principles place us on the 71st place in the world. With respect to security and education, we are 40th and 41st respectively.

The good news is that there has been an improvement of 6 places since last year and 9 places since 2006, when it started tracking the index. The biggest improvement is in the economy - we have climbed from 81st to 65th in the world.

In the top 10 overall prosperity indexes are Norway, New Zealand, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, Canada, Australia, UK. Germany is 11th, USA - 18th. Russia is 101st, and Sudan, the Central African Republic and Yemen are at the bottom.

The whole world is improving, reports this year's index. Prosperity increased by 2.6% compared to 2007, and is now at its highest value for the ten-year period. In addition, prosperity grew faster than 2012 to 2017 than between 2007 and 2012.

But this is good news for some of the countries in the index - the gap between the top positions and the lowest has increased in the last five years.

Asian countries show a major economic boom, and in every region of the world, the fastest in Africa, there is an improvement in governance and transparency. Expectedly, there has been a decline in the level of security in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in individual countries in South America.