Country risk: How the mighty are falling

It's a measure of the turmoil in world markets that not a single bank was at first prepared to supply the forfaiting rates used by Euromoney in its calculation of these country-risk rankings. So fast were things changing that even these usually stable indicators became too volatile. Banks supplied them on request on a day-by-day basis to clients an indication of how difficult trade finance, the lubricant of the real economy, was becoming.

For historical country risk data please visit the Euromoney Country risk website

Country risk: Country risk revisited

Country risk: Reasons for big changes

Country risk: Methodology

The story of this year’s table is Russia. The former superpower drops below even non-reformist ex-Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan, below Tajikistan, Pakistan and Kazakhstan. Default, particularly default accompanied by government threats to impose hyperinflation, scares away lenders and investors much more effectively than small size or straightforward poverty.

Japan too is starting to pay the price for the paralysis of its political process and the consequent stalling of banking and economic reform.

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