Country Risk: Switzerland takes a tumble
The Euromoney country risk assessment uses nine categories that fall into three broad groups: analytical, credit and market indicators. The weighted scores are calculated as follows: the highest score in each category receives the full mark for the weighting; the lowest receives zero. In between, figures are calculated according to the formula: final score = weighting / (maximum score minimum score) x (score minimum score). The ranking shows the final scores after weighting.
The categories are:
* Economic data (25% weighting). Taken from Euromoney's Global Economic Projections 1997-98. Each country scores the average of evaluations for 1997 and 1998.
* Political risk (25%). Euromoney polled risk analysts, risk insurance brokers and bank credit officers. They were asked to give each country a score between 10 and zero. A score of 10 indicates no risk of non-payment; zero indicates that there is no chance of payments being made. Countries were scored in comparison both with each other and with previous years. Country risk was defined as the risk of non-payment or non-servicing of payment for goods or services, loans, trade-related finance and dividends, and the non-repatriation of capital.