But there are still countries with over 6% growth, says Andrew Gordon in Investor’s Daily Edge. Some of them, such as Afghanistan and Angola, aren’t the safest places in the world, however. And they are difficult to invest in directly.

A way around this is to find an American company doing business in these high-growth economies or a foreign company listed on a US stock exchange.

Market growth is nowhere to be found. Not in Canada, not in Mexico, not in emerging countries and certainly not in the U.S., as the chart below attests.

So, has market growth and the economic growth it depends on completely disappeared from the face of the earth. Not quite. There are still some countries showing impressive economic growth. The fastest-growing country in the world is Azerbaijan. Its economy is growing at an 18.6 percent clip. And on Azerbaijan’s heels is Angola – clocking growth of 16 percent.

According to the IMF there are plenty of countries whose growth comes in over six percent. I’ve listed them below from fastest to slowest.

Armenia (10)
Turkmenistan (9.5)
Liberia (9.5)
China (9.3)
Nigeria (9.1)
Georgia (9)
Libya (8.8)
Afghanistan (8.6)
Ethiopia (8.4)
Uzbekistan (8)
India (7.9)
Tanzania (7.8)
Panama (7.7)
Sudan (7.6)
Oman (7.4)
Vietnam (7.3)
Cambodia (7.2)
Montenegro (7.2)
Belarus (7.1)
Uganda (7.1)
Argentina (7)
Peru (7)
Moldova (7)
Egypt (7)
Mozambique (7)
Ghana (6.9)
Russia (6.8)
Madagascar (6.8)
Suriname (6.8)
Sierra Leone (6.5)
Morocco (6.5)
Lithuania (6.5)
Sri Lanka (6.4
Zambia (6.3)
Indonesia (6.1
Mauritania (6.1)
Uruguay (6)
Pakistan (6)

Other than the BRIC (Brazil/Russia/India/China), not many of the other countries have captured investors’ imagination. Vietnam and Argentina are the two notable exceptions.

Would you like to invest in the fastest-growing country – Angola? All I know about Angola is that my daughter lives on the Namibian side of the border between Namibia and Angola and the Peace Corps won’t allow her to step one foot inside Angola. It’s not the safest country in the world … to travel or invest in.

Pakistan anybody? How about Afghanistan? The Sudan? Clearly, many of these countries are unsavory for one reason or another. And many others are hard to invest in: there are no mutual funds investing in them or companies in those countries listed on American exchanges.

But there are some. For example, Telekomunikasi (TLK), Indonesia’s major telecom company, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Another way to invest? Find an American company that is doing a lot of business in one or several of these countries. For example, Dow Chemical is making a major investment in Libya and Intel is doing a major project in Vietnam.

Or find a respectable overseas company listed on a U.S. exchange that is doing business in these countries. For example, Sasol (SSS), the oil and gas producer from South Africa, has operations in Mozambique and other African countries. It’s also listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Or if you’re interested in Moldova, Belarus, Montenegro and other central European countries, you could invest in iShares Austria Index ETF, (EWO). This ETF invests in companies which do business in central Europe.

Granted, it’s indirect exposure. But given the risky nature of many of these countries, indirect is probably the best kind of exposure to have.

Source: It Is Still Possible to Invest in Growth

That decision may not seem very significant, but consider it this way: If you were Indonesia, which countries would you rather have as your buddies? A bunch of sleazy, corrupt, idle “lottery winners” such as Nigeria, Venezuela and Angola? Or would you prefer a set of hard-working and diligent neighbors such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand? Not to mention two of the largest growth economies in the world: India and China?

Believe me, when Indonesia left OPEC it wasn’t to save the paltry $3 million annual dues. Like Groucho Marx, Indonesia decided it didn’t want to be a member of a club that had such low standards for membership. Instead, it would rather join the good guys.

For emerging market investors, that choice is a significant one.

To be fair, Indonesia’s decision wasn’t just based on a snobbish desire to mingle with a classier set of countries. For one thing, while Indonesia still produces and even exports quite a lot of oil, it’s a big country and is no longer self-sufficient from a petroleum standpoint: While its needs are about 1.1 million barrels per day, its production is now only 860,000.

What’s more, Indonesia doesn’t share OPEC’s ambition, which currently appears to be to squeeze the rest of the world until oil costs $1 million a drop. Indonesia subsidizes oil for its domestic consumers (237 million of them, most of who are pretty poor) and so the last thing it wanted was yet higher oil prices – the subsidies were killing its budget.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono took a huge amount of heat when he increased domestic oil prices by 125% in 2005; there were more riots after he found it necessary to raise them another 30%. However, if he hadn’t done so, oil subsidies alone would have been more than 20% of government spending – and that’s before taking into account food subsidies for the poor, also necessary in a year when rice prices have trebled.

The bottom line is that Indonesia wants lower – not higher – oil prices. More so, in the last decade, it has abandoned the sillier features of an OPEC-member country’s economic-management playbook. While the oil company Perusahaan Pertambangan Minyak Dan Gas Bumi Negara – commonly referred to as Pertamina – is still state-owned, it is allowed to do joint ventures with foreign companies. And, unlike Russia or most OPEC countries, Indonesia’s government has the sense not to steal the proceeds of those joint ventures that prove themselves successful. As a result, more than half of Indonesia’s oil-import deficit will disappear when the Cepu Block offshore oil fields, jointly developed by Pertamina and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), opens up to full production in 2010.

Since Indonesia doesn’t agree with OPEC’s prime objective, and doesn’t approve of OPEC’s typical state-owned kleptocracy as a way of conducting business, it’s not surprising it decided to leave.

That’s not to say that Indonesia has reached free-market perfection. For one thing, it remains astonishingly corrupt – ranked 143rd on Transparency International’s 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index. That places the country far below China and India and close to the level that makes Nigeria and Myanmar such charming places in which to do business. The corruption dates back to the 32-year rule (1966 to 1998) of Indonesian strongman Suharto, who modernized the economy but used his position to grab billions of dollars for himself and his family and was forced out of office in an economic collapse. He died early this year.

Nevertheless, in the last decade, instead of wasting energies on rooting out every vestige of Suhartoism, Indonesia has moved a long way towards being a functioning democracy. Under Yudhoyono, the economy has grown at around 5% per capita, while privatizations have taken place – the steel company Krakatau is due to be privatized later this year, for example. Public spending has been kept under control and, most importantly, Indonesia has used these years of easy money and high commodity prices to pay down debt. Its international debt is now only 35% of its gross domestic product (GDP), a level it should easily be able to live with without major crises.

In summary, Indonesia has moved from a commodity exporter to a true emerging market, and deserves the attention of investors accordingly.

There are only two Indonesian companies with full American Depositary Receipt (ADR) listings, both of them in the telecom sector. Thus, the easiest way for a U.S. individual investor to invest in Indonesia is through the closed-end Indonesia Fund (IF) The fund is run by Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR: CS), is rather small at only $93 million in assets, but has the advantage of selling at a 9% discount to net asset value (NAV), with an expense ratio of 1.55%. It has returned 38% per annum over the last five years, as Indonesia has demonstrated its recovery from the 1998 “Asian contagion” financial crisis, but there would appear to be more to go for.

Indonesia’s satellite telephone company PT Indosat Tbk (ADR: IIT) operates cell-phone and long-distance services, and is currently trading at a Price/Earnings ratio of 15 on trailing earnings. It has a dividend yield of 4%.

Indonesia’s fixed-line telephone company, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (ADR: TLK), is trading at a trailing P/E of 14, and features a dividend yield of 3.6%. It offers fixed-line and cell-phone services, and is the country’s traditional telephone provider, founded in 1884.

With the two ratings so close, I would tend to go for the satellite service PT Indosat Tbk, since Indonesia is a large and enormously complex archipelago, with shaky infrastructure.

Source: Even Groucho Marx Would be Happy With Indonesia’s Profit Opportunities