The Philippines is the fifth most attractive destination for foreign direct investments, according to the latest edition of the Baseline Profitability Index (BPI), a benchmark developed by Harvard-trained economist Professor Daniel Altman.
India topped the 2025 BPI ranking, followed by Rwanda, Malaysia, Botswana and the Philippines.
The index, originally launched in 2013, uniquely factors in both growth potential and the preservation and repatriation of returns. It ranks markets for foreign investment based on asset growth, value preservation, and ease of capital repatriation.
“As the United States continues to experience slowed growth and unsteady markets—and as tariffs force multinationals to reorient supply chains—more investors are looking abroad for new locations to invest their capital,” the report said.
The BPI serves as a practical benchmark for foreign direct investment by accounting for the share of proceeds that can actually be returned to the investor’s country of origin.
It considers a five-year time horizon for roughly 100 countries.
The Philippines received a BPI score of 1.20, placing it fifth. It outranked Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Georgia and Uganda, which occupied the sixth to tenth places.
The BPI highlights two main groups of economies with the potential to offer attractive repatriation of proceeds to foreign direct investors. One group offers high growth rates and potential for real exchange rate appreciation—an increase in the value of its goods and services relative to those of other countries. “Among the leaders of this group are India, Rwanda, the Philippines and Vietnam,” the report said.
The other group provides a secure investment environment where returns can be preserved and easily repatriated. This group is led by Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Czechia, and Poland. A few highly ranked countries, like Malaysia and Botswana, fall between these two groups.
“The newest edition of the Baseline Profitability Index shows once again that the economies making headlines for fast growth – like Ethiopia and Bangladesh – aren’t always the ones that will deliver the highest returns,” Altman said.
“Investors who want to know how much of their returns will actually reach their pockets need to take a more nuanced approach, and the Baseline Profitability Index is exactly the right tool for balancing those risks,” he said.
India topped the list in 2025. “India’s growing economy continues to offer an extremely attractive home for foreign direct investment,” Altman said.
“The Baseline Profitability Index suggests that investors in India can also expect further appreciation of the real exchange rate to make their Indian assets more valuable. In the meantime, there is still plenty of room for India to improve its scores in areas like security, finance, governance and property rights,” he said.
