The UK is the nineteenth-best place to do business in the world, below Saudi Arabia, Chile and Australia, according to a newly-launched index by accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The ESCAPE Index, launched today, takes into account 20 factors to do with the economy, social mobility, infrastructure, politics and the environment to provide an overall score.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Scandinavia and surrounding territories top the bill, with Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark making up the top five respectively.

The UK is nineteenth, down from twelfth place in 2000 under the index’s retrospective calculations, while Australia rose six places to feature seventh on the list and the US one place above Britain in eighteenth.

John Hawksworth, PwC chief economist and co-author of the report, said: “The UK was hit hard by the global financial crisis: since then it has had relatively low GDP per capita growth and high inflation, although both measures improved significantly during 2013.

“Businesses and consumers are likely to feel the benefit of the current recovery because the brakes went on so hard between 2007 and 2012. Now we're seeing renewed job creation and growth, the UK is likely to be moving back up the index.”