MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Santiago is once again Latam's top business city

A study by MasterCard published this week ranked Santiago de Chile as the best place in Latin America for doing business.

The survey praised the city's legal and political framework, economic stability, financial markets, business friendliness, and information infrastructure. Santiago ranked 39th on the MasterCard survey with Mexico City and Sao Paulo ranked 42nd and 48th, respectively. MasterCard's rating index was developed by a panel of leading global economists in an effort to identify the world's top 50 trading centers. It is based on six measurements, fed by information from 100 sources. The Master Card index placed London as the world's topmost city for doing business, followed by New York, Tokyo, Chicago and Hong Kong. MasterCard's study comes on the heels of a previous study by América Economía magazine which also named Santiago as the best city in Latin America for doing business. The América Economía survey extolled Santiago's high quality of living, excellent security, economic stability, and expanded communications infrastructure. But the América Economía survey cautioned that Santiago's "advantage is ever narrowing" in relation to other Latin American cities. The magazine cited Santiago's much reviled Transantiago mass transit system and the city's increasing contamination as two factors of major concern that may well have a negative effect on the city's future ranking. The Santiago Times