Competitiveness: Brazil Improves After Five Years

Argentina and Nicaragua lead gains, Panama, Dominican Republic lose.  

BY JOACHIM BAMRUD

For the first time in five years, Brazil – Latin America’s largest economy – is improving its competitiveness, according to a Latinvex analysis of the latest Global Competitiveness Index from the World Economic Forum.

The milestone is only the latest showing a turnaround in Brazil’s economy after years of mismanagement, with inflation falling for the first time in several years and the economy and foreign direct investment growing as a result of recent reforms.

Meanwhile, Argentina and Nicaragua led the way in improving their competitiveness in Latin America the past year, while Panama and the Dominican Republic suffered the worst deterioration, according to our analysis of the new data from the World Economic Forum, which was released in its Global Competitiveness Report 2017-2018.

Chile’s economy remains the most competitive in the region, but Costa Rica now ranks second, thanks to improving its score just as Panama (last year’s number two) suffered a deterioration.

Mexico, Latin America’s second-largest economy, continues to rank ahead of Brazil as well as the economies of Colombia and Peru.

At the bottom, Venezuela continues to be the top loser. In fact it ranks among the 11 worst countries on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index, which tracks 137 nations worldwide.

Overall, Latin America’s competitiveness improved, with its average score reaching 4.8 points compared with 4.6 last year. (Since Bolivia was not included this year, we compared this year’s score with last year’s score after taking out Bolivia).

“Latin America and the Caribbean have seen 10 years of continued improvement in competitiveness,” the World Economic Forum said in a statement on the release of the new competitiveness report. 

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