Chile is Latin America’s most attractive country for foreign investment

Once again, Chile outperformed the region’s other leading economies on the Milken Institute’s 2025 Global Opportunity Index.

The Latin American version of the 2025 Global Opportunity Index once again named Chile the most attractive country for foreign direct investment, ranking it higher than the region’s four largest economies (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia), which did not make the top three.

On the index prepared by the California-based Milken Institute, Chile is followed by Uruguay and then Costa Rica. In fourth place comes Mexico, followed by Peru, Jamaica, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Guatemala and Paraguay. El Salvador, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Honduras are at the bottom of the list.

The ranking’s authors consider components like the ease of doing business, macroeconomic outlook, depth and breadth of the financial system, the stability and transparency of a country’s institutions, and a country’s integration within the international community.

Economic Performance

“With its long record of market-oriented policies, Chile continues to lead the GOI ranking for the LAC countries,” says the official report. “However,” it adds, “the country drops to fourth among LAC’s major economies and to 112th overall in Economic Performance. While this partly reflects an adjustment after Chile’s fast economic expansion in 2021, it is also a sign of potentially slowing productivity. Still, the country continues to attract a sizable amount of capital relative to its GDP (8.0 percent in 2023), reflecting sustained investor interest, partly due to Chile’s abundant natural resources.”

The study mentions that Argentina “ranks last or second to last among LAC’s economies in all index categories. Despite its vast natural resources, the country’s economy continues to struggle amid economic and political imbalances.”

Notably, the report is based on 2023 data, the most recent available at the time the ranking was being prepared. That may be a decisive factor in the results for countries like Argentina.

Source: Emol.