Finland took out the top spot for the second consecutive year in 2012, followed by Sweden, but the North Americans dominated in 2013.

The US jumped from fourth to first this year, while Canada moved up a place to second.

RESOURCESTOCKS editor Anthony Barich said the US was able to take out the top spot despite other countries scoring better in the red and green tape categories.

“Meanwhile, Canada is showing how to get things done in terms of balancing community concerns and miners’ interests; and there have been calls for a system similar to its flow-through share tax incentive system to be implemented in Australia,” he said.

Mexico was third, followed by Botswana and Chile.

Australia rose one spot to sixth, with concerns over red and green tape preventing it from polling higher.

Like last year, the Canadian provinces trumped the Australian states.

Saskatchewan jumped to first place over Alberta, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick, British Columbia and Yukon.

The best Australia could manage was a 10th placing for South Australia.

The result represented the fourth consecutive year that SA topped the Australian rankings, thanks to its history of bipartisan political support for the resources industry and its renowned PACE program and Geological Survey.

Tasmania placed 12th, followed by Western Australia (13th), Victoria (15th), Queensland (16th), the Northern Territory (17th) and New South Wales (18th).

Rounding out the global top ten were Peru (7th), Burkina Faso (8th), Brazil (9th) and Namibia (10th).

Barich said African countries had been the success story of this year’s results.

“While the Nordic countries have previously dominated our World Risk Survey, several African countries, along with Mexico, have seen significant rises, reflecting where investment capital has been heading, and is increasingly heading,” he said.

“Some leading resources lawyers have even reported to RESOURCESTOCKS that labour costs and the costs are doing business are so low in some of these third-world jurisdictions that one could argue that they outweigh fears of a rising tide of nationalism in some parts of Africa,” Barich said.

Last year’s top ten in order were Finland, Sweden, Canada, the US, Chile, Norway, the UK, New Zealand and Brazil.

It should be noted that Finland, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand and the UK were excluded from this year’s main survey due to a low response rate.

Of the 40 companies in the main survey, Sierra Leone scored the lowest, with high scores across red tape, financial risk, sovereign risk and land access.

The survey asked participants to rank jurisdictions from five to one - one being the lowest risk - according to financial, sovereign and social risk, land access, red and green tape, infrastructure, civil unrest, natural disasters and labour relations.

The full results, including scores for all countries and in-depth analysis, will be in the October/November edition of RESOURCESTOCKS magazine, sister publication of Longwalls.com.