Competitive Alternatives – New Features

KPMG's Guide to International Business Location Costs

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BRIC coverage

For the first time, the 2012 study includes the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Together with Mexico, these countries represent the five high growth markets included in this new study.

China and India emerge in the study as the low-cost leaders among these countries, with China leading in the manufacturing sector and India in the digital and corporate services sectors. While business costs in Mexico and Russia are relatively close, costs in Brazil are higher than in the other high growth countries, due to higher wage levels and a significant burden for both direct and indirect taxes.

Source: Competitive Alternatives, KPMG LLP (Canada), 2012

If you are looking for further details on the business cost results for the BRIC countries in Competitive Alternatives 2012, jump to the Highlights section of this site.

Looking beyond pure business costs, the analysis of other competitiveness factors contained in Competitive Alternatives 2012 include a wealth of data on the BRIC countries, and Mexico. For example, did you know that:

• Over the last decade, these five countries have nearly doubled their share of world output and they now account for one fifth of global GDP.1
   
• According to the 2011 World Competitiveness Yearbook China now outranks the UK, Japan, France, and Italy for overall economic competitiveness, while India and Mexico also outrank Italy.2
   
• The share of global foreign direct investment (FDI) destined to India more than doubled between 2005-7 and 2008-10, with India receiving a higher value of global FDI in 2008-10 than either Germany or Japan.3
   
• China's credit rating was upgraded in December 2010, and is now higher than Italy and at the same level as Japan.4
   
• India and Mexico will be the two countries with the youngest populations by 2030. While the average age of the Chinese population in 2010 was more than five years younger than France and the United Kingdom, the aging effects from China’s "one child" policy means that by 2030 the average age in China will be older than either France or the United Kingdom.5
   
• The urban density of metro Mumbai is more than 15 times higher than the New York City metro area. In comparison, the urban population density of metro Shanghai is only 3.6 times that of metro New York.6
   
• Russia has a higher proportion of university and college graduates in its working age population than any other country studied—higher than Canada, Japan, or the United States. Russia also has a greater proportion of researchers in its workforce than the Netherlands or Italy.7
   
• China more than quadrupled its annual numbers of new university and college graduates between 1999 and 2009, while Brazil’s numbers of new graduates more than tripled over the same 10 year period. 8
   
• Even with all those new graduates, more than half of Brazilian employers surveyed in 2011 reported difficulties recruiting skilled workers, while in India two thirds of employers reported the same problem. Among the mature countries, only in Japan do employers have more difficulty finding skilled recruits.9
   
• High-school students from Shanghai outperformed all other countries’ national results in the 2009 global PISA test of science skills. While these results are impressive, they are only for one highly urbanized area of China, and even some educators in Shanghai acknowledge that innovative critical thinking skills are lagging these test-oriented skills.10
   
• The cost of crime to business in India and China is assessed by business executives as being about the same as in Australia or France, even though the reliability of police in the former countries is assessed as being about the same as in Italy (which ranks last among the mature countries on this score).11
   
• Housing prices in China in 2010 had risen so high that, relative to income, it is estimated that an apartment in Chengdu was less affordable than a house in greater London, New York or Toronto. And an apartment in Shanghai was less affordable than a house in Sydney.12
   

For further analysis of the BRIC countries in Competitive Alternatives 2012, head to the Downloads section of this site to access the study reports or executive highlights. Or, continue on for additional KPMG global perspectives on international business, including the BRIC countries.

Summary references, refer to the study report for further details:
1	World Economic Outlook Database, IMF, September 2011.
2	World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) copyright © 2011, IMD International, Switzerland, World Competitiveness Center, www.imd.ch/wcc.
3	FDI/TNC database, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
4	Standard and Poor's. January 2012.
5	World Population Prospects: 2010 Revision, United Nations Secretariat.
6	World Urban Areas (World Agglomerations), Demographia, 2011.
7	Graduates: population with tertiary education, OECD 2008 Researchrers: OECD 2010.
8	UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Tertiary education graduates.
9	The Talent Shortage Survey, Manpower Group, 2011.
10	Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2009, science competencies, OECD.
11	The Global Enabling Trade Report, World Economic Forum, Switzerland 2010.
12	International Housing Affordability Survey, Demographia. Median house price as a multiple of median household income. Reporting data from 2010. Asian Property Yardstick, J.P.Morgan. Price of a 90 m2 apartment divided by annual household income. Estimates for 2010.