Latin America: Competitiveness Improves Slightly

Mexico and Argentina improve, Brazil and Ecuador worsen competitiveness score.

BY LATINVEX STAFF

Latin America’s competitiveness improved slightly the past year, according to a Latinvex analysis of the latest Global Competitiveness Index from the World Economic Forum.

For the second year in a row, Mexico showed an improvement while Brazil experienced a deterioration in competitiveness.

Meanwhile, Argentina noted a small improvement after years of no change or deteriorations.

All in all, the average Latin American score improved 0.03 percentage points to 4 points, with 13 of the 18 countries in the region seeing improvements.

Mexico’s score improved 0.12 percentage points to 4.41, resulting in the country moving up one spot on the Latin America ranking – from fourth to a shared third place with Costa Rica.

Brazil saw its score fall 0.02 percentage points to 4.06, which resulted in a 6-spot decline globally and a one-spot fall in Latin America.

Argentina, which changed governments in December 2015, saw a slight improvement, with its score now at 3.81, or 0.02 percentage points better than last year. While the country still ranks low in Latin America – in 13^th place – it is expected to see gradual improvements the next few years as a result of the new government’s liberalization of the economy.  

Chile and Panama remain the most competitive countries in Latin America.

THE LAGGARDS

Ecuador saw the worst performance, with its score falling 0.11 percentage points to 3.96, resulting in a fall on the global ranking of 15 spots – from 76^th last year to 91^st place this year.

Both El Salvador and Bolivia show a worrisome trend of continuing declines the past few years.  El Salvador fell 10 spots globally from last year to this year, following a 11 spot decline from 2014 to 2015.  Bolivia fell four spots the past year after declining 11 spots the previous year.

Meanwhile, Venezuela remains the worst country in Latin America and ranks among the nine least competitive countries among the 138 countries the World Economic Forum looked at.

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