It never ceases to amaze real investors why respected organisations trot out the so-called "Doing Business" type reports, which contain soothing words of comfort that mask a nation's potential suitability for foreign direct investment.
If you ask the thousands of small inexperienced private and corporate Stanford investors, who lost billions, many will say they invested there because Antigua is ranked highly as a former British Colony with all of the seemingly right laws in place, it is a pleasant country and its people are, in the main, peaceful and friendly.
These investors have been sold on the country because it was a nice tourist destination and not a well-considered place to invest, what were often their life savings.
The three questions that are important to both experienced and inexperienced investors alike are: is my money safe, will it be managed properly, can I remove it and its profits with ease?
Nothing else matters and Antigua fails miserably!
So fluffy rankings like the recent one by the Financial Times fDi Intelligence are not only extremely misleading but are also fundamentally reckless.
Where is the balance, where is the mention of endemic corruption, of national default, of money laundering and banking fraud, of breached international treaties and local laws, including the country's own Constitution? Most important for foreign direct investment, be it corporate or individual, is why there is no mention of the expropriation of foreign-owned business and property, seized by the Government of Antigua, which has been dragging on for fourteen years, without payment of any compensation?
The only suggestion that these issues have been considered at all comes from the relative positioning of Antigua as sixth behind Costa Rica. That carries a message only to those who are already aware of the pitfalls of foreign direct investment in those two countries.
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