The trend is even more pronounced at the very top of the heap, where all the AAA-rated jurisdictions for this year - Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, and Nevada - are from North America. This follows the sole representative from the rest of the world in 2017, Sweden, losing 6% year-on-year to see it tumble out of AAA territory.
AA and A-rated jurisdictions from North America were Quebec, Alaska, Arizona, Alberta, Colorado, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Yukon and Idaho.
AA-rated Finland and Sweden were the two highest-placed jurisdictions from outside North America, while new entrant and fellow European country, Austria, also returned a AA-rating. Meanwhile, Jurisdictions from mining stronghold Australia were under-represented as only Western Australia, Tasmania and South Australia managed an A-rating.
The lowest-rated North American jurisdiction was California with a BBB rating. The poorest performing Australia jurisdiction was also BBB, though there were four of these - Queensland, Victoria, Northern Territory and then New South Wales.
South America had two A-rated jurisdictions in Chile and Peru, while its worst-rated jurisdiction was Guyana. Mexico was the only A-rated jurisdiction from Central American/Caribbean, which also had two CC-rated countries in Guatemala and Cuba.
Africa, Asia and the Middle East failed to register any plus-A-rated scores. The best in Africa were Madagascar, Morocco and Côte d'Ivoire, which were all BBB-rated. Japan and South Korea were BBB-rated and the best in Asia. Turkey with a BB rating showed the best investment security in the Middle East.
Unsurprisingly, then, Africa and Asia hosted the jurisdictions with the greatest investment risk. Asia had two D-rated jurisdictions - Myanmar and Vietnam - while the DRC in Africa recorded the worst rating within our coverage by some margin, a 29 out of 100, following punitive changes made to its mining code and a deterioration in the social conditions.
Most of the big moves within the index were also seen in Africa. The DRC, as mentioned, lost plenty of ground following its legislative shock and was off 26% year-on-year. Tanzania, another country to make nationalistic changes to the mining rulebook, was off 16%.
More than balancing these negative results to help deliver a net positive performance for Africa as a region were Burkina Faso (up 14%), Guinea (11%), Mali (10%) and Mozambique (10%).
The biggest shift from any jurisdiction was recorded by Greenland with a gain of 27%. Greenland, however, is viewed as an autonomous state within Denmark and so is not covered by several of the hard metrics used in the Investment Risk Index. It is therefore more exposed to the World Risk Survey and so vulnerable to greater year-on-volatility.
Other jurisdictions to register positive gains of 10% or more were Bolivia (13%) and the Kyrgyz Republic (12%).
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