Uruguay was positioned for the second consecutive year as the 23rd most attractive emerging market in the worldaccording to the new edition of the Emerging Markets Logistics Indexpublished by Agility in February and disseminated by the consulting firm Nueva Mayoría.
The country was positioned in the ranking with a score of 4.93. Thus, it was above South Africa and below Kazakhstan, despite scoring 0.02 less than in 2021.
The ranking consists of four pillars, the first being that of domestic logistics opportunitieswhat measures the performance of each emerging market and its potential to sustain and develop the internal demand required by any competitive logistics market. In this pillar Uruguay scored 4.78, which represented a drop of 0.09 points compared to the last edition.
Rosendo Fraga (son), director of Nueva Mayoría, explains that while nearly half of emerging markets suffered a comparable downgrade in their domestic logistics opportunities, Uruguay was the only one in Latin America that lost ground in this pillar. Paraguay, Colombia and Peru maintained the same position and the rest of the countries improved.
The second measures the international logistics opportunities by analyzing the external demand for intensive logistics services and the capacity of each emerging market to facilitate cross-border logistics operations. In this, Uruguay reached 4.41, thus having an improvement of 0.01 points. It is the best score since 2020, but it is well below his best year, 2019, in which he scored 4.54.
The third pillar is business fundamentals, which assesses emerging markets on their openness, robustness, fairness, and the strength of each one’s business environment. At the same time, it measures respect for the rule of law and the independence of each market. The score was 6.08 in this pillar, with a drop of 0.17 points compared to the year 2021.
The last pillar was included for the first time in this edition and contemplates the digital market readiness. Measurements of it span the connectivity of the population, the digital empowerment of the workforce, the global compatibility of the business ecosystem, and the culture of business risk. In this, the country scored 4.93 and it was only surpassed in this pillar in Latin America by Chile, Brazil and Mexico.
The New Majority report alleges that it could be attributed the casualty mitigation in domestic logistics opportunities and business fundamentals suffered this year, in order to keep Uruguay in 23rd place.