Suppose your company wants to establish a factory in Latin America to make and sell products in the region. It has narrowed the pool of candidate countries to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Your task is to write a report that compares the FDI environments of these countries. One approach is to obtain the Country Fact Sheet for each nation from UNCTAD (www.unctad.org), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, an agency that gathers FDI data. You can access this data either through globalEDGE™ or the UNCTAD site. By examining the fact sheets, answer each of the following questions individually for Argentina, Brazil, and Chile:
a. What nations are the major trading partners of each country in the region? (This indicates the size and stability of existing trading relationships with key partners.)
b. Which companies are the leading firms now doing FDI in each country? (This can identify key competitors.)
c. What is each country’s rating on the FDI Performance Index? (This rating indicates the performance that typical firms have experienced when investing in each country.)
d. What is the level of merger and acquisition activity in each country? (This shows the maturity of each country for acquisition-based FDI.) Elaborate and justify your findings.