If you are starting a business or looking to expand the existing one across the borders of your native country, then you should really pay attention to our list of the easiest countries to export to.
Trading has been here since the dawn of times. People always exchanged goods, giving something they had plenty in return for the things they lacked of. We can’t speak about the international trade before the emergence of the nation-states, but that doesn’t mean people didn’t trade on long distances. There were no borders to stop them or customs officials to give them trouble. Fast forward to the future and international trading is something that makes the world as we know it and has a great economic as well as political and social importance.
Important elements of international trade are export and import. Export is sending products or services of one country to another. On the opposite side, import is bringing products or services into the country. Every country wants to have a positive trade balance, which means that the value of exported goods is bigger than the value of imported goods.
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There are lots of advantages to export. The most important one is that exporting goods or services is the easiest way to expand your business internationally. Your products will be accessible to a larger market and if your product is any good, you will see an increase in sales, resulting in an increase in profits. Another appeal of exporting is that the risk is far smaller compared to establishing the same business in the particular country through foreign direct investment. Finally, as an exporter, your business will see increased reputation in the native country as well. There are, however, lots of disadvantages to exporting that could have bad consequences for your local business and the company in general. First, you would have to dedicate some serious resources to your exporting operations. This includes both financial and personnel resources which will in the short term have a negative impact on your local activities. There is a possibility that you would have to modify your product to fit the foreign market. There are lots of other complications that may arise from being unfamiliar with trade regulations of the foreign country, its language or culture. This is why you don’t see often small businesses and enterprises exploring the possibility of export. Even if that happens, it is focused on a neighboring country or a country with similar market and customer base. If exporting isn’t your final goal, but moving to another country with your family is, then check out our list of the Best Countries for Expats to Raise Children.
You must be curious about our methodology in figuring out the easiest countries to export to. After testing lots of different methods, we settled on combining the list of countries with the highest value in imports from The World Factbook and trading across the border data from the World Bank given in DTF (distance to frontier) measure. Countries that import lots of goods present a high demand and developed market and are more open to trade with other countries. The data from World Bank tells us how it’s easy to trade across the border of a particular country in terms of time and cost associated with border and documentary compliance as well as domestic transport for both export and import. Distance to the frontier measure of 100 represents the best performance while 0 represents the worst performance. We awarded points for the countries according to their performance on both lists and summed it all up into our IM Score. Note that the source for trade information about the countries was The Observatory of Economic Complexity. Shall we take a look at the list of easiest countries to export to?
