Barbados falls in competitiveness rankings

A year after jumping into second place among Latin American and Caribbean financial centres in global competitiveness, Barbados has slumped to the second to last spot for the region and seventh from the bottom globally, according to the latest Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI).

Of the 13 financial centres named in Latin America and the Caribbean for the GFCI 31st edition, which was released at the end of last month, Barbados was ranked 12th, only ahead of Panama in the region.

Bridgetown was ranked 113th overall, out of the 119 financial centres included in this year’s rankings. This represents a fall in ranking of 23 spaces from 90th in the GFCI 30 rankings which was released in September last year. The country was ranked 64th overall and 2nd among the region in the GFCI 29 ranking, released a year ago.

The GCFI, which is published in March and September by City of London and its most respected think-tank Z/Yen, serves as one of the valuable references for policy and investment decision-makers.

It is compiled using some 150 quantitative measures, which are provided by third parties including the World Bank, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the United Nations.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, Barbados is ranked behind Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Cayman Islands, Santiago, Bogota, the BVI, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago and Buenos Aires.

According to the report, GFCI 31 used 74,982 assessments from 11,934 respondents and the instrumental factors are combined with financial centre assessments provided by respondents to the GFCI online questionnaire.

The data on which GFCI 31 is based relate to the period up to the end of 2021. The overarching areas of competitiveness assessed include business environment, human capital, infrastructure, financial sector development and reputation.

“While we might have expected more volatility in the ratings as the world continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the broadly level ratings in the index suggests that in the last half of 2021, confidence was returning to the world economy,” the report said.

The top ten financial centres in the GFCI 31 in descending order are New York, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Singapore, San Francisco, Beijing, Tokyo and Shenzhen.

The least ten competitive in terms of ranking in descending order are Buenos Aires, Vilnius, Riga, Barbados, Baku, Panama, Kuwait City, Xi’an, Tehran and Wuhan.

When respondents were asked to give a view on where in the world they would like to work if they needed to live and work in a different city New York heads the list. (MM)