South Africa ranked sixtieth out of 77 destinations in terms of investment attractiveness,Canada-based public policy research organisation the Fraser Institute’s 2020 Survey of Mining Companies, released late last month, has shown.
The country ranked fortieth out of 76 destinations in 2019.
Further, South Africa’s investment attractiveness score worsened to 56.33 in 2020, from 64.79 in 2019.
The country’s ranking on the policy perceptions index also worsened to 66 out of 77 jurisdictions, compared with 55 out of 76 in 2019.
Meanwhile, although the median score for Africa on the investment attractiveness index improved by nine points in 2020, it remained the second-least attractive jurisdiction for investment, with a median score of 60.83.
Africa’s median policy perception index score also increased by almost 20 points and it is no longer the worst-performing region in terms of policy environment for mining activities.
In fact, all African jurisdictions, with the exception of Namibia, increased their policy scores, the survey noted.
Botswana is the highest-ranked jurisdiction in Africa on policy, ranking fifteenth out of 77. This was an improvement of eight points, compared with its ranking in 2019.
Namibia, the only African jurisdiction that did not improve its policy perception index score, experienced a 13-point decline in its policy score, dropping in the overall policy ranking from fourteenth out of 76 jurisdictions in 2019 to forty-seventh out of 77 in 2020.
Three African countries – Zimbabwe, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo – were in the bottom ten of the survey rankings this year based on policy. Zimbabwe was also among the bottom ten in the previous eight years.