Germany is the most positively viewed nation in the world, an annual poll has found.
More than 26,000 people were surveyed in this year’s annual Country Ratings Poll for the BBC World Service
The respondents were asked to rate 16 countries and the European Union on whether their influence in the world was ‘mainly positive’ or ‘mainly negative’.
According to the BBC, Germany got the top slot with 59 percent of the respondents rating it positively. Iran was once again the most negatively viewed.
Germany, whose economy has done better than almost every other in Europe in recent years, scored well across the world in the poll.
In Ghana, 84 percent of people polled said Germany’s influence was mainly positive, while 81 percent in neighbouring France and 76 percent in Australia felt the same.
Global views of Europe’s biggest country have improved significantly in 2013, according to the poll.
It was conducted for the BBC by GlobeScan and PIPA, who conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews with randomly selected people, mainly in urban centres, in 25 countries around the globe.
The poll also indicated that positive views of China and India have fallen sharply around the world over the last year. After improving for several years, views of China have sunk to their lowest level since polling began in 2005, putting it in ninth position.
In the poll, India was ranked 12th, 35 percent of the respondents giving it negative views slightly outnumbering positive ones (34 percent) for the first time.
Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and Iran came out worst in terms of how they are viewed globally. Only 15 percent of respondents said they saw Iran as having a mainly positive influence, the report added. (ANI)