Costa Rica is the second-most attractive country for foreign investors in the Central American and Caribbean region, according to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Magazine.

In a report published Tuesday, FDI magazine released rankings of the region's “foreign direct investment countries of the future,” in which Puerto Rico placed first, with Costa Rica close on its heels.

A panel of three judges graded 31 Central American and Caribbean destinations across seven categories to determine final rankings. The categories scored were: economic potential, business friendliness, quality of life, human resources, infrastructure, cost effectiveness and FDI strategy. Each category was scored on a 10-point scale.

Of the seven categories, Costa Rica ranked in the top five out of five of them, including first in human resources. Costa Rica's lowest ranking was in cost effectiveness, the only category in which they did not receive a top 10 ranking.

This is the second consecutive top billing for Puerto Rico by FDI Magazine, which ranked the Caribbean island No. 1 in 2007, the last time rankings were tabulated. Costa Rica finished just three points behind the Caribbean island.

The Dominican Republic ranked third and earned the top ranking in the categories of economic potential and FDI strategy. Panama was ranked fourth and Guatemala fifth.

According to FDI Magazine, two programs, known as FDI Markets and FDI Benchmark, were used to generate scores for the rankings. FDI Markets is a database that tracks foreign direct investment on a real-time basis while FDI Benchmark is a database that ranks global locations on how appealing they are to foreign investors. FDI Magazine reports that the data compiled by FDI Markets and FDI Benchmark provided an objective measure to create the “Countries of the Future” rankings.

The judges included Alfredo Coutino, the d irector for Latin America Moody's Economy.com, John Bowers, owner of Bowers Consulting, and Darryl White, h ead of investment banking at the RBTT Merchant Bank Limited, which serves Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean region.