Ranking Caribbean Countries on Foreign Investment Per Capita
Above: St Kitts (CJ Photo)
By the Caribbean Journal staff
What’s the Caribbean’s foreign investment capital?
To put it another way, which Caribbean country brings in the most foreign investment?
We took a look at the most recent Foreign Direct Investment report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
But the raw numbers don’t tell much of a story.
So in order to better evaluate the ability of each country to bring in foreign investment, we looked at foreign direct investment inflows in relation to population and created a new metric FDI per Capita: that is — how much FDI does each Caribbean country bring in per capita?
The answers led to a very different ranking, with St Kitts and Nevis at the top.
The Caribbean’s smallest sovereign country brought in $120 million in FDI last year, or about $2,214 per citizen. That was followed by Antigua and Barbuda, which brought in $167 million last year and about $1,855 per citizen.
The lowest FDI/capita countries were the Dominican Republic, at $212.40 per citizen, Haiti, with $9.59 per citizen and Suriname, $7.42 per citizen.
See the full table below (population is based on 2013 estimates).