Latin America Business: Chile Best

Chile has the best business climate in Latin America, followed by Panama and Peru, according to the sixth annual Latin Business Index from Latin Business Chronicle.

Venezuela ranks worst by a far, scoring less than 2 points when every other country tallied at least 13 points, the latest calculation shows.

The 2011 index broadly measures the climate for business in 18 countries in Latin America. It focuses on five categories using a methodology revised from 2010. The categories and their components are:

• Macro environment: Percent GDP growth in 2009, 2010, estimated 2011 and forecast 2012, and percent inflation for those years.
• Corporate environment: taxes, labor environment, access to capital for entrepreneurs, ease of doing business and economic freedom.
• Globalization and competitiveness: globalization, competitiveness, tariffs and security.
• Infrastructure level: Transport, technology penetration, access to water and quality of electricity supply.
• Political environment: political freedom, political stability, political outlook, judicial independence, business policies of government, transparency and intellectual property rights.

The new methodology adds several new subcategories, including tax and labor environment, judicial independence and intellectual property rights. It also drops Haiti due to insufficient data in all subcategories.

Adjusting last year’s results to the new methodology, the biggest improvement for 2011 came from ...

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THE RANKINGS
Latin Business Index 2011
Winners & Losers
Scores by Countries
Scores by Categories