To obtain the overall country risk score, Euromoney assigns a weighting to nine categories. These are political risk (25% weighting), economic performance (25%), debt indicators (10%), debt in default or rescheduled (10%), credit ratings (10%), access to bank finance (5%), access to short-term finance (5%), access to capital markets (5%), forfaiting (5%).
Political risk (25% weighting): 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. Risk analysts give each country a score between 10 and zero – the higher, the better.
Economic performance (25%): based (1) on GNI (Atlas Method) figures per capita and (2) on results of Euromoney poll of economic projections.
Debt indicators (10%): calculated using these ratios from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators 2005: total debt stocks to GNP (A), debt service to exports (B); current account balance to GNP (C). Developing countries that do not report complete debt data get a score of zero.
Debt in default or rescheduled (10%): scores are based on the ratio of rescheduled debt to debt stocks, taken from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators 2005.OECD and developing countries that do not report under the debtor reporting system (DRS) score 10 and zero respectively.
Credit ratings (10%): nominal values are assigned to sovereign ratings from Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings. The higher the average value, the better. Where there is no rating, countries score zero.
Access to bank finance (5%): calculated from disbursements of private, long-term, unguaranteed loans as a percentage of GNP. Source: the World Bank’s World Development Indicators 2005.
Access to short-term finance (5%): takes into account OECD consensus groups (source: ECGD) and short-term cover available from the US Exim Bank and Atradius UK
Access to capital markets (5%): heads of debt syndicate and loan syndications rated each country’s accessibility to international markets.
Discount on forfaiting (5%): reflects the average maximum tenor for forfaiting. The maximum period of promissory note or bill of exchange from the issue date until its maturity date in the primary market, from the purchase/sale date to maturity in the secondary market data). Countries where forfaiting is not available score zero. We would like to thank Guy Brookes at Deutsche Bank, Simon Lay at London Forfaiting, Mezra Forfaiting, David Locking at Standard Bank, and WestLB for the supply of data.
