In Foreign Policy Daniel Altman, senior editor, economics, and adjunct professor at New York University‘s Stern School of Business, released the third edition of the Baseline Profitability Index, a guide to where to invest around the world in 2015. He has outlined the factors that affect the ultimate success of a foreign investment: how much an asset’s value grows, the preservation of that value while the asset is owned, and the ease of repatriation of any proceeds. Each of these factors requires a different kind of assessment, he says. It’s not enough to worry only about rates of return, corruption, political stability, investor protection, or exchange rates alone. The Baseline Profitability Index combines these factors into a summary statistic that conveys a country’s basic attractiveness for investment.
| Selected Countries | BPI | BPI Rank |
| India | 1.32 | 1 |
| Singapore | 1.22 | 4 |
| Hong Kong | 1.17 | 11 |
| Indonesia | 1.16 | 12 |
| United States | 1.04 | 50 |
| China | 0.99 | 65 |
| Brazil | 0.91 | 98 |
Full data at http://chart.fpdatawrapper.com/wzXtv/index.html
Out of 110 countries and territories, Venezuela is placed at the very last. Cambodia, Serbia, and Taiwan were not included this year because complete data on them was not available. Ukraine came back into the list after a year’s absence. Argentina is close to the bottom of the index. Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, and Zambia, all jumped at least 40 spots in the ranking for repatriation of capital. Two bright spots were Switzerland, and Senegal. The forecast brightened across much of Europe and also for East Africa’s two biggest economies. The outlook was dim for Burkina Faso and Mozambique. S. Korea was ousted from its position in the top third that it held last year, and both Peru and the U.S. fell behind too.
“But the big story in the BPI this year is India coming out on top, with growth forecasts up, perceptions of corruption down, and investors better protected following the election of a government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
