Costa Rica ranked top 10 investment destination in Latin America

Two international business and investment publications released reports ranking Costa Rica and its capital city as top 10 investment locations in Latin America.

In the quarterly “Euromoney Country Risk” survey, the London, United Kingdom-based financial publication Euromoney ranked Costa Rica as the 7th safest investment destination in Latin America and 68th safest country for investment in the world. Panama ranked the highest in Central America at 51. Chile, ranked 25^th in the survey, was considered the safest investment destination in Latin America.

Costa Rica improved five places in the survey’s rankings during the second quarter of the year due to “limited economic risk” and “improved political stability.” Euromoney also considers credit ratings, debt indicators and accessibility to capital markets when generating each country’s overall score.

On Monday, the publication “FDI Intelligence”, a division of the business journal The Financial Times, ranked San José as the 5th best “Latin American city of the future” for foreign direct investment (FDI). The study examined investment possibilities of 405 Latin American cities and chose San José as the top FDI destination in Central America.

According to the Foreign Trade Ministry (COMEX), Costa Rica aims to bring in $1.85 billion in FDI in 2011. President Laura Chinchilla has said her administration hopes to generate $9 billion in FDI through 2014.