qatar , the most efficient government.
the criteria they chose is the govt that spend the least. maybe that should be their heading… the most thrifty governments. so that would rule out any govt that have any welfare system. efficiency is not just measured on how little a govt spends. they should also see how effective it is in not having a clogged up bureaucracy.
i presume the spending is as a proportion of GDP and qatar has a huge income revenue, from the oil, so that would give it a huge GDP(US$211billion) so that even if the actual spend is more than another western country, or one of comparative size, it would still come out low as a percentage of that GDP.
singapore is second, GDP US$298billion, and i would imagine it may be more accurate to give it first.
all the top 5 countries in their list have either no welfare system or in the case of finland (GDP US$270billion) and new zealand,(GDP US$211billion) have small populations, 5million or so. (when i looked it up in google i was surprised that it has so few people living in them. in this day and age when we hear so much of overpopulation, to be reminded that there are these countries with so few people living in them, makes me , i dont know, envious? so few to have use of a whole country to themselves.
in fact all the countries in the top 5 have small populations, qatar £2million, hongkong £7million(GDP US$290billion) singapore £5.4million. so it may be the fact that they have such small populations is a big factor in their being thrifty… not a lot to spend money on.
all in all, quite a pointless list. it just goes to show what u can produce when u only use statistics. illustrates very well that saying ‘there are lies, damn lies, and statistics’.
UK GDP is US$2,942 billion . pop 63.5million
this link says qatar will be in deficit for the first time in 15yrs in 2015… due to the low oil price that began in june 2014, and it is the host of the world cup in 2022 means there will be lots of capital expenditure in future.
it owns the chelsea barracks development, and that is going to be put on hold or even sold.
alifesgayventure 
Thanks for this post. I enjoyed the stats 🙂