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Caribbean and Central American Countries of
the Future 2009/10
Published: August 18, 2009
In the first year of a combined Caribbean and Central American
Countries of the Future competition, Puerto
Rico has ranked as the most attractive
country for foreign investors. Jacqueline
Hegarty reports on the leading
performers in the region.
JUDGING PANEL
Alfredo Coutino
Director for Latin America, Moody’s
Economy.com
John Bowers
Owner, Bowers Consulting
Darryl White
Head of investment banking, RBTT Merchant
Bank Limited
Puerto Rico has
been awarded the Caribbean and Central
American Country of the Future 2009/10 award
by fDi Magazine. In the first year of
the combined competition, Puerto Rico
marginally grasped first place as the top
three countries, including Costa Rica
(ranked second) and the Dominican Republic
(ranked third), were separated by a mere
three points.
Puerto Rico
achieved not only the top ranking overall,
but also the top ranking in the category of
business friendliness. The country has the
largest number of companies involved in
high-tech manufacturing, high-tech services,
and knowledge-based sectors in comparison
with the rest of the Caribbean and Central
American region.
Costa Rica
performed consistently well across most
categories, ranking in the top five in the
areas of economic potential, quality of
life, business friendliness, human resources
and FDI strategy.
Dominican
Republic was perceived by the independent
judging panel to have the best FDI strategy.
The Dominican Republic Export and Investment
Centre, with a staff of 40, lists the
country’s free-trade zones as a key
incentive to foreign investors. These
free-trade zones allow 100% tax exemption in
various areas including income tax,
construction tax and value-added tax. Costa
Rica and Panama were ranked second and
third, respectively, in the category of best
FDI strategy.
The Dominican
Republic was also ranked top in terms of
economic potential, primarily due to the
large labor force and average annual gross
domestic product growth of 7% between 2005
and 2008.
Bahamas and
Jamaica ranked first and second,
respectively, in the best infrastructure
category, with Jamaica scoring the highest
for the number of ports and Bahamas scoring
the highest in terms of the number of
airports compared with the rest of the
region.
Haiti and
Nicaragua claimed the top two positions for
cost effectiveness, with both having
relatively low office and industrial costs
and low minimum wages.
Note
In
April 2008, the Financial Times Ltd acquired
fDi Markets and fDi Benchmark.
fDi Markets is an independent
database which tracks global FDI on a
real-time basis whereas fDi Benchmark is an
independent database which benchmarks global
locations on how appealing they are to
foreign investors. This division compiled
the majority of the data for the Countries
of the Future competition, with the
exception of the FDI promotion strategy
which was submitted by individual countries
and assessed by the judging panel. These
changes have made the competition even more
objective.
Methodology
fDi
Countries of the Future shortlists are
created by in independent collection of data
by fDi Benchmark across 31 Caribbean
and Central American countries. This
information was set under six categories:
economic potential, human resources, cost
effectiveness, quality of life,
infrastructure and business friendliness. A
seventh category was added to the scoring –
FDI promotion strategy. In this category, 14
Caribbean and Central American countries
submitted details about their promotion
strategy and this was judged and scored by
our independent judging panel.
Countries
scored up to a maximum of 10 points under
each individual criteria which were weighted
by importance to give the overall scores.
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