The ADEN Competitiveness Institute places Chile, Costa Rica and Panama in the top three positions when it comes to competitiveness in Latin America.

This ranking is done every year since 2010 with the purpose of establishing how the countries in Latin America rank considering ten aspects:

1. Coverage of basic needs
2. Institutional aspects
3. Infrastructure
4. Macroeconomic stability
5. Health
6. Education
7. Population’s expectations
8. Market competitiveness
9. Efficiency in work relationships
10. Access to technology

The information provided by the ranking cooperates with the Latin American governments to improve their competitiveness and also provides reliable information to the business sector.

According to the report published by ADEN the main conclusions are:

Chile maintains the top position in the ranking, which it’s had since 2013, however, the difference in the score has reduced in comparison to other countries.
The second position in the ranking which corresponded to Panama in 2016 has been occupied this year by Costa Rica, although by a very small margin; Costa Rica obtained a 75.8 while Panama follows in third position with 75.6.

The fourth and fifth positions in the ranking correspond to Uruguay and Mexico, with 74.4 and 71.2 respectively.

Countries ranked 1 through 4 are considered to have a “very good level of country competitiveness”, number 5 is described as “acceptable”.

Other countries in Central America such as Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua took positions 14, 15 and 16 mainly because of insecurity problems, macroeconomic instability and institutional and infrastructure issues.

The last positions in the ranking are occupied by Bolivia and Venezuela, both countries have consistently taken the last places due to their different social and economic realities, however, Bolivia has shown some improvements in the macroeconomic stability and institutional aspects.

Aden explains that the evolution in competitiveness in a country is slow, and it takes years to see the differences, however, when the ranking from 2017 is compared to the one from 2012 significant changes can be seen, for instance Brazil, Chile and Colombia have obtained a lower score in 2017 while Dominican Republic, Bolivia and Costa Rica have shown significant progress.

Costa Rica used to lead the Health factor and this year it was Uruguay that took the leading place; while Argentina surpassed Costa Rica in the Education element.