Panama had the strongest GDP per capita growth the past five years and now ranks fourth. If the trend continues it will be third-richest country in Latin America next year and second-richest in 2015.
This in from my friend Joachim Bamrud at Latinvex
Latin America’s Richest and Poorest Countries
The countries that will boost their per capita wealth most over the next five years.
BY LATINVEX STAFF
Which countries in Latin America are the richest? Which are the poorest? Today and tomorrow?
Latinvex analyzed data and forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 18 countries in Latin America for this year, the past five years and the next five years. We used data for gross domestic product based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) per capita GDP in international dollars to measure wealth.
Latin America has an estimated GDP PPP of $12, 328 this year, an increase of 3.6 percent from last year. The next five years – during the period 2013 to 2017 — its per capita wealth is likely to reach $14,048.
We did not include Argentina, which uses inflated numbers for its Gross Domestic Product, according to the fund. “The IMF has called on Argentina to adopt remedial measures to address the quality of the official GDP … data,” it said in its latest World Economic Outlook report, where it also criticized the lack of reliable inflation data. “The IMF staff is also using alternative measures of GDP growth and inflation for macroeconomic surveillance, including data produced by private analysts, which have shown significantly lower real GDP growth than the official data since 2008.”
The richest country in Latin America is …