SCOTLAND is now on par with Slovenia after slumping down the world prosperity rankings under the SNP.

The country fell from 16th to joint 21st between 2006 and this year in the Social and Economic Wellbeing study.

1 Scotland has slumped in the world prosperity charts Credit: Alamy Live News

Along with Wales it was the joint biggest drop in the rankings by the Scottish Trends economic think tank.

The bad news for Nicola Sturgeon’s government was put down to “a decline in its education and income performance” linked to the oil slump.

The report said that Scotland appears to have "underperformed" since devolution.

The study claimed the government were not being held to account over policy decisions and there is "too little scrutiny".

It read: "The policy development and evaluation landscape is very weak.

"For example, few think tanks exist and those that do are mostly poorly funded by either the public or private sectors.

"Outside of the SNP, Scotland’s political parties are either small operations or effectively branch operations of UK parties and in both cases poorly funded.

"This has inhibited the development of alternative policy ideas and led to a lack of political competition."

Murdo Fraser, Scottish Conservative shadow finance secretary, said: “Yet again Scotland is plummeting down another league table thanks to the ineffective policies of the SNP.”

PROSPERITY LIST 2020 1.Switzerland

2.Norway

3.Japan

4.Iceland

5.Sweden

6.Netherlands

7.Canada

8.Australia

9.Finland

10.Denmark

11.Germany

12.England

13.Austria

14.New Zealand

15.UK

16.Korea

17.USA

18.Belgium

19.France

20.Estonia

21.Scotland, Slovenia (joint 21)

23.Czech Republic, Spain (joint 23)

25.Northern Ireland

26.Portugal

27.Wales

28.Italy

29.Poland

30.Slovak Republic

31.Hungary

32.Greece

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Switzerland topped the rankings, followed by Norway, Japan, Iceland and Sweden.

A spokesman for Finance Secretary Derek Mackay said: “People will look at this table — where four out of the top five countries are independent European nations with similar populations to Scotland — and wonder why a country as resource-rich as Scotland could not emulate them if independent.”

Separate figures also showed Scotland’s employment rate was 74.3 per cent — behind the UK’s record high of 76.3 per cent.

andrew.nicoll@the-sun.co.uk

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