Zurich Insurance Group has published rankings of the riskiest places in the world to do business, which includes 43 emerging markets. According to the rankings, Venezuela is the most dangerous country for business, and Taiwan is the safest emerging market for business.
The insurance group chose to treat Israel as an emerging market as well, and ranked it 32.
Zurich Insurance, which has been operating out of Zurich since the company was founded in 1872, has a special research department for business risks. The company has 55,000 employees, and serves private clients and small businesses in more than 170 countries. The rankings are based on 35 equally weighted criteria that cover financial, economic, and political risks. In the financial category, the criteria include credit risks and interest, the banking sector, and currency exchange. Economic risks include macro-economic criteria, quarterly and budgetary risks, trade balance and exposure to foreign creditors.
Political criteria include, among other things, corruption measures, political violence, expropriation of property, regulation, and legal system strength. Only countries with at least 27 known criteria were included in the rankings, so most African countries were not included. Each criterion was given a score of 0 to 1 (maximum risk), and the average was multiplied by 100, so the results are essentially risk rates.
Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Argentina are the most dangerous for business, after Venezuela, followed by Ukraine, Ecuador and India. Russia is ranked 11 in the risk rankings, and South Africa placed 13. Turkey also ranked relatively high at 15.
Following are the complete rankings (most dangerous to least):
1) Venezuela
2) Nigeria
3) Egypt
4) Pakistan
5) Argentina
6) Ukraine
7) Ecuador
8) India
9) Dominican Republic
10) Guatemala
11) Russia
12) Sri Lanka
13) South Africa
14) Indonesia
15) Turkey
16) Morocco
17) Brazil
18) Philippines
19) Vietnam
20) Colombia
21) Kazakhstan
22) Croatia
23) Mexico
24) Thailand
25) Peru
26) Romania
27) Chile
28) Saudi Arabia
29) Bulgaria
30) Hungary
31) Uruguay
32) Israel
33) Slovakia
34) Malaysia
35) Slovenia
36) Latvia
37) South Korea
38) Czech Republic
39) Lithuania.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 10, 2014
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