Latin American West coast “Gold Mines” to be considered for growth

Colombia, Peru and Chile’s economies have been growing strongly in the last couple of decades to the point that the combined gross domestic product of these three countries is now comparable to a country like Holland and would make it to the top 5 of US states by GDP ranking  (1).

With a total population above 100m and an average GDP per capita (PPP) comparable to China, these 3 economies need to be considered seriously for investment.

While Chile’s economic freedom ranks 18th in the world – close to the US - Peru and Colombia rank 45th and 49th respectively. That puts any of these three economies well ahead of France or Spain on that dimension (2).

It’s only in the last 4 years that M&A activity has started to grow, and private investment trends now reach spectacular levels with more than one M&A deal per day happening in this geography ($50 m average size) – that’s one of every four deals in South America happening in the Andean countries (3).

Think about it: here are markets located at 2.5 to 8 hours from Miami, with socio-economic homogeneity, politically stable and with 42% of population below 25 years old (4)… would that be an opportunity to grow further where competition is low, and investment opportunities are plenty?

Sources: UN, IMF, OECD, World Bank, FRED, TTR.com, Heritage.com