One thing I don't like about your proposed variable is that as far as I can see, you'd have to do additional assignment of the $LOOPCOUNTER variable if you want to nest loops.

I prefer the way more "functional/OO" languages like javascript and ruby implement foreach loops using callbacks with explicit parameters. Something that's easy to implement in perl for fullblown objects:

$list->foreach( sub {
  my ($element,$index) = @_;
  print "$index $element\n";
});
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If perl's prototypes would work for methods, you could build something very close to ruby's

list.each_with_index { |element,index|
   print "#{index} #{element}\n"
};
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For completeness, here's the javascript version:

array.forEach(function(element,index) {
  document.write(index+" "+element+"\n"); // depending on the host
});
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Note that ruby & javascript's versions also have the advantage of being easily overridable for any object (including "standard arrays", since both allow methods to be attached to objects instead of only to "object types" / classes - and, of course, in both languages arrays are always "real" objects).

updated: fixed typo, slight cleanup of wording.