The Global Business Readiness Index (GBRI)

Draft Whitepaper: Verison 1.0 | April 2026

Executive Summary

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Traditional country rankings answer incomplete questions.

• GDP rankings tell us who is large.
• Ease of Doing Business rankings tell us where regulation is efficient.
• Financial development rankings tell us where capital pools are deep.
• Education rankings tell us where future talent may emerge.
• English proficiency rankings tell us where cross-border work is easiest.

But executives, investors, founders, and policymakers often need a different answer:

Which countries are most ready for modern business success?

The Global Business Readiness Index (GBRI) was created to answer that question.

GBRI combines four critical dimensions into one composite framework:

1. Overall Financial Depth: availability of capital
2. Ease of Doing Business: operational friction
3. English Proficiency: global commercial operability
4. PISA Scores: future workforce capability

The result is a practical, cross-country benchmark for identifying where firms can most effectively:

• launch operations
• attract talent
• raise capital
• serve global clients
• scale sustainably

Why the World Needed a New Index

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Many respected indexes already exist. However, they tend to operate in silos:

GBRI fills a practical gap: It measures the intersection of capital, execution, communication, and talent. This is where business success increasingly happens.

Core Question GBRI Answers

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For CEOs

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For CEOs, GBRI is fundamentally a strategic decision-support tool for capital allocation, expansion planning, and organizational design. Senior executives are constantly making choices about where to deploy resources: which country should host the next regional office, where a shared services center or global capability center should be established, which market offers the best balance of growth opportunity and execution risk, or where future talent pipelines are strongest. GBRI helps frame these decisions by combining factors that materially affect enterprise success: access to financing, regulatory efficiency, workforce operability, and long-term talent quality. Rather than relying on GDP size or anecdotal market perceptions, CEOs can use GBRI to evaluate countries through a more practical operating lens.

GBRI is also useful for balancing short-term execution needs with long-term competitiveness. Some countries may score highly because they are efficient and business-friendly today; others may be rising because of improving education outcomes and future workforce strength. This distinction matters when CEOs are planning multi-year investments, acquisitions, digital transformation programs, or talent strategies. For example, one market may be ideal for immediate customer support operations, while another may be better suited for engineering, analytics, or innovation hubs over time. In this way, GBRI does not simply indicate where business conditions are favorable today. It helps CEOs think more clearly about where their company can sustainably build, hire, fund, and scale tomorrow.

For Investors

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For investors, GBRI serves as a market-screening and opportunity prioritization tool that helps identify countries where capital is most likely to be converted into sustainable enterprise value. Investors across private equity, venture capital, infrastructure, and public markets are not only evaluating companies, they are also evaluating the environments in which those companies operate. GBRI helps assess whether a market combines the core ingredients that support returns: access to financing, manageable operating friction, a globally usable workforce, and a credible future talent pipeline. This enables investors to look beyond headline GDP growth or demographic narratives and focus instead on the practical conditions that improve the odds of successful deployment and scaling.

GBRI is also useful for distinguishing between short-term momentum markets and structurally advantaged markets. Some countries may attract attention due to cyclical growth, low valuations, or thematic excitement, but lack the institutional or talent foundations required for durable compounding. Others may appear less fashionable yet possess deep readiness characteristics that support long-term value creation. For growth investors, GBRI can help identify ecosystems where portfolio companies can recruit, expand, and access follow-on capital. For macro and institutional investors, it can highlight jurisdictions where business competitiveness may strengthen over time. In this sense, GBRI is not a replacement for sector diligence or company analysis. It is a complementary framework for evaluating where investment capital may have the highest probability of productive outcomes.

For Governments

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For governments, GBRI serves as a diagnostic and policy prioritization tool that helps identify the structural factors most affecting national business competitiveness. Many countries seek higher investment, stronger job creation, deeper capital markets, and greater participation in global value chains, yet progress is often constrained by specific bottlenecks. GBRI helps policymakers assess whether those constraints are primarily financial, regulatory, linguistic, or educational in nature. By combining these dimensions into a single comparative framework, the index allows governments to benchmark performance against regional peers and aspirational economies using metrics that are directly relevant to private sector growth.

GBRI is also useful for designing targeted reform agendas and long-term competitiveness strategies. A country with strong education outcomes but weak business scores may need regulatory modernization. A country with strong capital access but weaker workforce readiness may need investment in schools and skills. A country with high English proficiency but shallow financial systems may benefit from market development reforms. Rather than treating competitiveness as a vague concept, GBRI helps governments identify which levers may generate the greatest uplift in national readiness. In this sense, the index is not merely a ranking. It is a practical framework for aligning policy decisions with economic opportunity, investment attraction, and sustainable enterprise development.

For Founders

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For founders, GBRI serves as a practical framework for choosing where to build and scale a company. Early-stage entrepreneurs often focus on product, fundraising, and customer acquisition, but geography can materially influence all three. The environment in which a startup is launched affects access to capital, speed of company formation, hiring quality, operating costs, and the ability to serve international customers. GBRI helps founders compare countries based on the conditions that most directly impact startup success: financing depth, business friction, workforce operability, and future talent strength. This allows founders to make more informed decisions about where to incorporate, where to hire, where to locate teams, and which markets may offer the best platform for growth.

GBRI is also valuable for balancing immediate startup needs with long-term strategic positioning. A founder may choose one country for fundraising and regulatory ease, another for engineering talent, and another for customer support or market expansion. Some markets are strong for present-day execution, while others may offer superior talent pipelines over time. GBRI helps founders think beyond hype cycles or anecdotal startup trends by evaluating countries through a broader readiness lens. In this sense, the index is not a substitute for company-specific strategy or sector fit. It is a tool for increasing the odds that a startup is built in an environment where it can recruit, operate, attract capital, and scale effectively.

Methodology

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Composite Formula

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GBRI is a composite formula. For each country \(i\):

\(GBRI_i = 0.30(FD_i) + 0.25(EDB_i) + 0.20(ENG_i) + 0.25(PISA_i)\)

Where the following represent the following normalized scores:

• FD = Financial Depth
• EDB = Ease of Doing Business
• ENG = English Proficiency
• PISA = Education Quality

Because the source indicators use different units and scales, all component measures are normalized to a common 0–100 scale prior to aggregation. This ensures comparability, preserves relative performance differences, and prevents any one raw metric from dominating the composite purely due to scale.

Weighting Logic

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The weighting structure of GBRI is intentionally non-equal because the four underlying dimensions do not contribute equally to business readiness in practice. An equal-weight model would imply that each factor has identical causal importance across firm formation, scale-up, and long-term competitiveness. While equal weighting is common as a neutral starting point, it can also be economically unrealistic. In real-world business environments, access to capital and the ability to operate efficiently often function as foundational constraints: a country may have strong language capability or educational outcomes, but if firms cannot secure financing, enforce contracts, transact efficiently, or navigate the regulatory environment, business formation and scaling remain impaired. For that reason, Financial Depth (30%) receives the highest weighting, reflecting the role of capital as an enabling input across virtually all sectors. Ease of Doing Business (25%) is weighted next because regulatory friction directly affects execution speed, cost structure, and investment attractiveness. Together, these two dimensions represent the structural conditions under which businesses can actually function.

The remaining weights recognize that readiness is not solely about capital and regulation; it is also about people. PISA scores (25%) are weighted equally with Ease of Doing Business because future workforce quality is a major determinant of sustained competitiveness, innovation capacity, and productivity over time. This prevents the index from over-rewarding countries that are efficient today but underinvested in future human capital. English Proficiency (20%), while highly important in the modern global economy, receives a slightly lower weight because its economic relevance is more sector-dependent. English capability is critical in cross-border services, outsourcing, technology collaboration, finance, and multinational operations, but somewhat less decisive in domestically oriented or resource-based economies. In short, GBRI gives the greatest emphasis to factors that most broadly constrain or enable all businesses (capital and operating environment), while still assigning meaningful weight to talent readiness and global operability. This creates a weighting model that is more economically grounded than equal weighting, yet still transparent and intuitive.

Data Sources

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1. Financial Depth

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Based on IMF Financial Development Index methodology and related capital market proxies:

• private credit/GDP
• market capitalization
• debt markets
• institutional assets

For the Financial Depth component, the primary conceptual anchor is the IMF Financial Development Index (FDI), which is explicitly designed to measure how developed a country’s financial institutions and financial markets are across depth, access, and efficiency. The IMF defines the overall index as an aggregate of Financial Institutions and Financial Markets sub-indices; within this framework, the depth dimensions include variables such as private sector credit to GDP, pension fund assets to GDP, mutual fund assets to GDP, insurance premiums to GDP, stock market capitalization to GDP, stock market turnover, and debt securities outstanding. These indicators directly align with the GBRI concept of “capital available for businesses.”

Where a clean country-year IMF depth value was not directly harmonized into the working dataset, related capital market proxies were used to preserve broad comparability. Specifically, proxies refer to market-standard measures that capture a country’s practical financing capacity: domestic credit to private sector (% GDP) as a proxy for bank-led lending depth; stock market capitalization (% GDP) as a proxy for equity funding capacity; local currency bond/debt securities outstanding (% GDP) as a proxy for fixed-income funding depth; and, where relevant, institutional assets (pensions, insurance, mutual funds) as a proxy for long-duration domestic capital pools. In application, countries with mature exchanges and debt markets score higher because firms have multiple funding channels beyond banks, while bank-dominant systems rely more heavily on credit measures. These are thereore “Financial Depth Proxies (IMF-aligned)” and were only used where direct IMF comparable depth values were unavailable or incomplete.

2. Ease of Doing Business

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For the Ease of Doing Business component, GBRI uses the World Bank Doing Business 2020 score, the final full edition of the World Bank’s long-running benchmark covering 190 economies. The index was selected because it remains one of the most widely recognized and practically useful global measures of business-operating friction, quantifying how easy it is for a standard domestic firm to start and run operations across areas such as starting a business, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency. Its score is already presented on a 0–100 scale, making it especially suitable for inclusion in a composite index.

Although the World Bank later discontinued the Doing Business series following data integrity concerns, the 2020 edition still provides a globally comparable, transparent, and highly business-relevant snapshot of regulatory efficiency. For GBRI, this component captures a core practical question: How difficult is it to legally and operationally execute business activity in a given country? That makes it a strong complement to the other GBRI dimensions (capital depth, talent quality, and English operability), which measure different but equally important constraints on commercial success. In future versions of GBRI, this component could be updated or triangulated with alternative governance and enterprise-environment datasets, but Doing Business 2020 remains a useful baseline benchmark.

3. English Proficiency

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For the English Proficiency component, GBRI uses the EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI), one of the most widely cited global benchmarks of adult English skills across non-native English-speaking countries. EF EPI was selected because it directly measures a country’s practical capacity to participate in the modern global economy, where English frequently serves as the common operating language for international business, technology, finance, outsourcing, aviation, academia, and multinational management. Unlike school-curriculum indicators, EF EPI focuses on working-age adult proficiency, making it especially relevant for evaluating current labor-market readiness rather than future potential alone. In the context of GBRI, this component captures an often-overlooked but economically material factor: the ease with which a country’s workforce can communicate, collaborate, sell, support clients, and integrate into cross-border value chains. This helps explain why countries such as Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, and the Netherlands often outperform what GDP or education metrics alone might predict.

4. Education Quality

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For the Education Quality component, GBRI uses the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022, the world’s most recognized cross-country benchmark of applied student capability at age 15. PISA was selected because it measures not merely curriculum completion, but students’ ability to apply mathematics, science, and reading skills to real-world problem solving, making it a stronger proxy for future workforce productivity than enrollment rates or years of schooling alone. In the context of GBRI, PISA captures the medium to long-term human capital pipeline that will shape managerial quality, technical talent, innovation capacity, and national competitiveness. This is particularly valuable because some countries perform far better or worse than income levels would predict, revealing hidden strengths (e.g., Vietnam) or structural weaknesses (e.g., countries with high income but weaker learning outcomes).

Normalization Method

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All metrics were converted to a common 0–100 scale using min-max normalization.

\(Score_i = 100 \times \frac{x_i - x_{min}}{x_{max} - x_{min}}\)

Min-max normalization was selected over other methods such as z-score standardization, recentile ranking, and rank normalization because it converts heterogeneous indicators into a common 0–100 scale while preserving relative performance gaps, enabling transparent weighting and intuitive interpretation for academic, policy, and executive audiences.

Global Rankings (Illustrative Top 20)

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The following Global Rankings (Illustrative Top 20) present the highest-performing countries under the current GBRI methodology, based on the weighted combination of financial depth, ease of doing business, English proficiency, and education quality. These rankings should be interpreted as a comparative measure of overall business readiness rather than economic size or income level. Countries at the top tend to combine strong access to capital, efficient operating environments, globally deployable talent, and high-quality human capital pipelines.

Key Insights

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1. Small Countries Dominate Readiness

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Many top GBRI performers are not the largest economies.

Examples:

• Singapore
• Netherlands
• Denmark
• Ireland
• Switzerland

Why?

One of the clearest patterns in GBRI is that many of the top-performing countries are relatively small by population or landmass. Examples include Singapore, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, and Switzerland. This is not accidental. Smaller countries often develop a structural need to compete through efficiency, openness, and specialization rather than relying on the advantages of large domestic markets. Because they cannot depend solely on scale, they are often more focused on building institutions that attract capital, streamline regulation, educate talent, and integrate into global trade networks. In practical terms, this can produce environments where businesses are easier to launch, talent is more globally deployable, and financing systems are more sophisticated relative to economic size.

Smaller advanced economies also tend to be more outward-looking and internationally connected. Many have trade-oriented growth models, strong logistics systems, multilingual workforces, and policy cultures shaped by the need to remain globally competitive. As a result, they often score well across multiple GBRI dimensions simultaneously. A large country may excel in one category, such as market size or capital depth, while underperforming in others due to regulatory complexity or uneven talent outcomes. Smaller countries, by contrast, often succeed by becoming highly balanced platforms for business activity. GBRI therefore highlights an important truth of the modern economy: business readiness is not determined by size alone. In many cases, agility, institutional quality, and global connectivity matter more than scale.

GBRI rewards usable ecosystems, not raw size.

2. English Is an Undervalued Economic Force

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Countries like:

• Philippines
• Malaysia
• Ireland
• Singapore

receive major advantages from workforce operability.

One of the more overlooked drivers of national competitiveness is language, particularly proficiency in English as the dominant working language of international commerce. English is widely used across finance, technology, aviation, consulting, science, outsourcing, and multinational management. Countries with strong English capability often enjoy lower friction in cross-border business because their workforce can communicate directly with global clients, integrate into multinational teams, adopt international training materials, and participate more easily in knowledge networks. This creates real economic advantages that are not always visible in GDP figures, industrial output, or traditional competitiveness rankings. In many sectors, language fluency functions much like infrastructure by reducing transaction costs, speeding execution, and expanding access to global demand.

GBRI treats English proficiency as an economic capability rather than a cultural trait. This helps explain why countries such as Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Ireland, and the Netherlands often perform strongly in globally traded services, regional headquarters activity, and international talent markets. A country may have moderate income levels or limited domestic scale, yet still become highly competitive if its workforce can operate seamlessly in the language most used for business. Conversely, countries with deep capital pools or strong technical talent may face hidden friction if language barriers limit collaboration or customer reach. English is not the only path to success, but in a globally connected economy it is frequently an undervalued multiplier of productivity, employability, and investment attractiveness.

GBRI captures the reality that English often functions as business infrastructure.

3. Vietnam vs Philippines Reveals the Future vs Present Divide

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Vietnam outperforms the Philippines despite lower English proficiency.

Why?

The comparison between Vietnam and the Philippines illustrates one of the most valuable uses of GBRI: separating present-day commercial operability from future structural competitiveness. The Philippines benefits from strong English proficiency, a mature services-export sector, cultural familiarity with Western markets, and a workforce that is highly usable today for customer support, shared services, and many cross-border business functions. These strengths have made the country a global leader in BPO, business services, and remote talent deployment. On a purely current-operating basis, the Philippines often performs above what traditional education metrics might predict.

Vietnam, by contrast, highlights the importance of future capability. Its significantly stronger PISA outcomes suggest a more robust pipeline of numeracy, literacy, and technical readiness among younger cohorts. Combined with rising manufacturing competitiveness, export integration, and growing investor interest, this gives Vietnam an advantage in the medium- to long-term foundations of economic upgrading. In simple terms, the Philippines demonstrates readiness for many business needs today, while Vietnam demonstrates readiness for a broader set of business opportunities tomorrow. GBRI captures both realities and shows why two countries can be attractive for very different reasons.

In short:

• Philippines = strong current operability
• Vietnam = stronger future capability

Both matter.

4. Capital Alone Is Not Enough

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Countries with strong finance systems but weaker execution or talent do not automatically top GBRI.

Access to capital is essential for business growth, but GBRI highlights that capital by itself does not guarantee a high-readiness environment. A country may have large banking assets, active stock markets, sovereign wealth, or abundant domestic savings, yet still underperform if businesses face excessive regulatory friction, weak talent pipelines, or barriers to global commercial integration. Capital can finance expansion, but it cannot fully compensate for inefficient permitting systems, difficulty hiring skilled workers, poor educational outcomes, or limited ability to engage with international customers. In practice, investors and companies seek places where money can be deployed productively, not simply where money exists.

This distinction helps explain why some financially sophisticated countries do not automatically top GBRI rankings, while more balanced economies often do. Business success usually requires a combination of funding, execution capability, and human capital. An entrepreneur with access to financing still needs competent employees, workable rules, and reachable markets. Likewise, multinational firms may prefer a country with somewhat smaller capital pools if it offers stronger talent and smoother operations. GBRI therefore treats financial depth as a critical but incomplete ingredient. Capital matters most when it is paired with institutions and people capable of turning investment into sustained enterprise value.

Capital must be paired with capability.

Validation Against Existing Indexes

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GBRI aligns with known truths while adding nuance.

What It Confirms

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• Singapore is elite
• Nordics are highly competitive
• Canada and Australia are balanced winners
• UK remains globally advantaged
• US remains powerful despite regulatory complexity

Where It Adds Nuance

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• Philippines stronger than education scores alone imply
• Vietnam stronger than language scores alone imply
• Malaysia often underrated
• Netherlands disproportionately elite

Surprising Results

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Netherlands: The Quiet Titan

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The Netherlands is surprising because it is often overshadowed in global business discussions by larger European economies such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, yet it consistently performs at or near the top of composite competitiveness measures like GBRI. It combines strengths that are individually well known but rarely appreciated together: deep pension and institutional capital pools, world-class logistics infrastructure, strong rule of law, high English proficiency, excellent education outcomes, and an outward-looking trade culture. The result is a country whose business readiness far exceeds what many casual observers would assume from its modest population size. The Netherlands demonstrates that scale is not required to become one of the most complete operating platforms in the world.

Repeatedly near the top due to:

• pensions
• finance depth
• trade openness
• English
• talent quality

Malaysia: The Hidden Heavyweight

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Malaysia is surprising because it is not always perceived as a premier global business hub, yet it scores strongly when multiple readiness factors are considered together. It benefits from comparatively strong English capability, a diversified economy, developed manufacturing capacity, improving capital markets, and a strategic position within Southeast Asia. Many rankings that focus only on GDP size or startup hype can understate Malaysia’s practical strengths. GBRI highlights that Malaysia is often stronger in real-world business usability than its global brand suggests. It is a country that can quietly outperform expectations for regional headquarters, manufacturing, services, and cross-border expansion.

Often stronger than casual observers expect because it combines:

• English capability
• decent institutions
• manufacturing depth
• capital access

Philippines: The Operability Outlier

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The Philippines is surprising because its overall readiness often exceeds what education rankings alone would predict. While weaker PISA scores create a perception of structural disadvantage, the country possesses powerful offsetting strengths: high English proficiency, deep experience in globally traded services, a large and adaptable workforce, strong cultural compatibility with Western markets, and an established banking and remittance-linked financial system. These factors make the Philippines highly functional in many present-day commercial settings, particularly BPO, shared services, fintech operations, and remote talent models. GBRI reveals that the Philippines is not simply an education story. It is an operability story, where practical workforce usability creates competitiveness beyond what traditional metrics imply.

Performs materially above what PISA alone suggests due to:

• English
• services maturity
• banking system depth

Regional Snapshots

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Practical Use Cases

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Multinationals

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Where to open a regional HQ or GCC? For multinationals, GBRI is a practical tool for evaluating where to place operations, talent, and future investment across a global footprint. Large companies regularly make decisions about where to establish regional headquarters, shared services centers, global capability centers, manufacturing sites, customer support hubs, technology teams, or treasury functions. These decisions require balancing multiple factors at once, including access to financing, ease of operating, language capability, talent quality, and long-term workforce sustainability. GBRI helps simplify that evaluation by combining these variables into a single comparative framework. A multinational may use the index to compare whether Singapore or Malaysia is better suited for an ASEAN hub, whether the Philippines or Poland is stronger for business process services, or whether Vietnam offers stronger long-term technical talent potential than a current lower-cost alternative. It can also support risk diversification strategies by identifying secondary markets with improving readiness rather than concentrating all activity in a few established hubs. In this sense, GBRI is useful not only for choosing where to expand, but also for designing resilient and efficient multinational operating models.

Private Equity

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Where can portfolio companies scale efficiently? For private equity firms, GBRI is a practical tool for screening markets where portfolio companies are most likely to grow efficiently and where operational improvements can translate into higher exit values. PE investors are not only underwriting individual businesses, they are underwriting the country environments in which those businesses must hire talent, access financing, navigate regulation, and scale revenue. GBRI helps identify jurisdictions where these external conditions are favorable, making it easier for management teams to execute value-creation plans such as geographic expansion, digital transformation, add-on acquisitions, or margin improvement initiatives. It can also help compare where to deploy sector-focused strategies, such as business services, healthcare, fintech, manufacturing, or consumer platforms. For example, one country may be attractive for acquiring a services business because of language and talent depth, while another may be stronger for industrial roll-ups due to education quality and ease of operations. GBRI is also useful in portfolio construction, allowing firms to diversify exposure across high-readiness markets and rising reform stories rather than relying solely on headline GDP growth. In this sense, the index supports smarter origination, better operating assumptions, and more disciplined country risk selection.

Startups

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Which countries maximize talent + capital + operability? For startups, GBRI is a practical tool for deciding where to launch, hire, fundraise, and scale with limited resources. Early-stage companies are highly sensitive to geography because founders must maximize every dollar of capital and every key hire. The country in which a startup operates can materially affect incorporation speed, access to investors, regulatory complexity, hiring quality, language compatibility with customers, and the availability of future talent as the company grows. GBRI helps founders compare these factors in one framework rather than relying on startup hype, anecdotes, or headline valuations. A startup may use the index to determine whether to base fundraising in one market, engineering in another, and customer support in a third. It can also help identify underrated ecosystems where competition for talent is lower but readiness fundamentals are improving. For venture-backed companies, GBRI is particularly useful for planning cross-border expansion and remote-first operating models. In this sense, the index helps founders choose environments where scarce startup resources have the highest probability of compounding into durable growth.

Governments

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Which reform yields highest readiness uplift? For governments, GBRI is a practical tool for shaping economic strategy, prioritizing reforms, and improving national competitiveness in ways that are directly relevant to private sector growth. Policymakers often seek higher investment, stronger job creation, more exports, and deeper participation in global value chains, but progress can be constrained by specific weaknesses such as shallow capital markets, regulatory friction, weak educational outcomes, or limited workforce operability. GBRI helps governments identify which of these constraints may be most binding by benchmarking their country against regional peers and aspirational economies. It can inform decisions on whether to prioritize capital market development, business registration reform, English and workforce training, or improvements in core education quality. The index is also useful for investment promotion agencies seeking to position their country to multinational firms, private equity investors, and founders using metrics that matter to business decision-makers. Over time, governments can use GBRI as a scorecard to track reform progress, communicate competitiveness improvements, and focus scarce policy resources on the areas most likely to unlock sustainable enterprise growth.

Limitations

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Data Timing

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Sources span multiple years. One limitation of GBRI is that it combines high-quality international datasets that are produced on different publication cycles rather than in a single synchronized year. For example, the Ease of Doing Business component is anchored to the World Bank Doing Business 2020 release, PISA reflects OECD 2022 results, English proficiency data may come from a more recent EF reporting cycle, and financial depth indicators may vary depending on the latest available IMF or proxy data by country. As a result, GBRI should be understood as a blended snapshot of structural readiness, not a precise real-time measure of current conditions on one specific date.

This timing mismatch is common in cross-country composite indexes because the best available global datasets are rarely updated simultaneously. In many cases, the underlying variables also move at different speeds. Education outcomes and financial depth usually evolve gradually over years, while regulatory reforms or business conditions can change more quickly. Therefore, a country that has recently implemented reforms may still be partially represented by older business-environment data, while a country experiencing short-term macro stress may still benefit from historically strong structural indicators. For most strategic uses, this does not invalidate the index, since GBRI is intended to measure medium-term readiness rather than short-term volatility. However, users should complement GBRI with current market intelligence, political developments, and sector-specific analysis when making immediate investment or operating decisions.

Financial Depth Proxy Use

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Some countries rely on proxy blends where direct IMF values are not readily aligned. Another limitation of GBRI is that the Financial Depth component may rely, in some cases, on proxy measures or blended estimates rather than a single perfectly harmonized official source for every country-year observation. While the IMF Financial Development Index provides the strongest conceptual foundation, comparable country coverage, update timing, and direct extractability of depth sub-components are not always uniform for every economy in a practical working dataset. To preserve broad country comparability, GBRI may therefore use related indicators such as domestic credit to the private sector, stock market capitalization, debt securities outstanding, or institutional asset pools as proxies for practical capital availability. These variables are widely used in finance and development research and are directionally consistent with the concept of financial depth.

The implication is that Financial Depth should be interpreted as an informed comparative estimate of a country’s capital ecosystem rather than a precise accounting measure. Some economies are bank-dominated, where lending channels matter most, while others rely more heavily on equity markets, pensions, venture capital, or bond issuance. A single proxy may therefore overstate or understate how accessible financing truly is for specific types of firms, especially startups, SMEs, or foreign entrants. In addition, countries with sophisticated capital pools may still have uneven distribution of credit access across sectors. For these reasons, GBRI’s Financial Depth score is best viewed as a broad indicator of financing capacity and market sophistication, not a substitute for detailed country-level capital markets analysis. Future versions of GBRI could improve this component further by using more granular sub-scores for bank credit, venture funding, bond markets, and SME finance access.

English Bias

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English matters globally, but less in closed domestic economies. A further limitation of GBRI is that the inclusion of English proficiency may create a degree of structural bias toward economies that are more integrated into English-speaking business networks. English is the dominant working language in many globally traded sectors such as technology, finance, consulting, outsourcing, aviation, and multinational management. For companies operating across borders, strong English capability can reduce transaction costs, improve customer service, accelerate training, and expand access to international markets. These are real economic advantages, which is why English was included as a component of business readiness. However, this also means countries where English is less prevalent may score lower even when they are highly competitive through other strengths such as domestic market scale, technical excellence, manufacturing capability, or strong institutions.

This is particularly relevant for large economies that can operate successfully in their own language ecosystems, or for export powers whose competitiveness is driven more by industrial capacity than by English fluency. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, China, Germany, or Brazil may be less dependent on English for domestic business success than smaller service-oriented economies. In that sense, English should be viewed as a proxy for global commercial operability, not a judgment on intelligence, education quality, or overall economic potential. It is also more valuable in some sectors than others. For example, it may matter greatly for BPO, SaaS, and financial services, but less for mining, utilities, or purely domestic retail. Future versions of GBRI could address this limitation by adjusting English weightings by sector, or by introducing broader measures of multilingual capability and international workforce adaptability.

PISA Scope

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Measures youth capability, not current or imported executive talent. A further limitation of GBRI is that the Education Quality component is based on OECD PISA 2022, which measures the capabilities of 15-year-old students rather than the current adult workforce or present-day managerial talent pool. PISA is highly valuable because it is one of the best global indicators of foundational skills in mathematics, science, reading, and applied problem solving. These competencies are strongly linked to future productivity, innovation capacity, and workforce quality. However, it is inherently a forward-looking indicator. Strong PISA performance suggests the potential for a more capable labor force in the years ahead, but it does not necessarily describe the skills of today’s engineers, executives, entrepreneurs, or mid-career workers already active in the economy.

This distinction matters because some countries may have weak PISA outcomes today but still possess strong current talent pools due to historical education strength, private-sector training, diaspora returnees, or imported expertise. Conversely, a country may score well on PISA yet still face challenges converting educational potential into enterprise productivity because of labor market rigidities, brain drain, or limited high-value job creation. In addition, PISA does not directly measure creativity, leadership, vocational capability, entrepreneurial drive, or sector-specific technical skills that can also be economically important. For these reasons, GBRI uses PISA as a proxy for the future human capital pipeline rather than a complete measure of national talent readiness. Future versions of GBRI could strengthen this dimension by blending PISA with adult skills surveys, tertiary attainment, STEM graduation rates, workforce productivity, or employer-reported talent availability.

Recommended Improvements (GBRI 2.0)

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As we look to improve the GBRI in the future, we might consider adding the following to the composite after further study:

Future Research Agenda

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Scenario Modeling

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• If Philippines had Vietnam PISA scores
• If India had Singapore business efficiency
• If Nigeria improved English + finance access

Sector Versions

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• Fintech Readiness Index
• AI Services Readiness Index
• Manufacturing Readiness Index

Time-Series Version

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Track reforms over time.

Strategic Conclusions

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The future will reward countries that combine:

• capital access
• low friction
• globally operable talent
• strong education pipelines

GBRI identifies those intersections earlier than GDP rankings do.

It shifts attention from:

“Who is biggest?”

to:

“Who is most ready?”

That is often the more valuable question.

Final Thought

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Many countries can attract investment once. Few countries can repeatedly turn capital into globally competitive enterprises. GBRI is an attempt to measure that difference.

Call for Feedback

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This report is currently in Public Draft status. Given the rapidly evolving nature of the global business landscape, we are seeking peer review and data verification from the community to ensure this analysis remains as accurate and comprehensive as possible. If you have insights, data corrections, or alternative strategic perspectives, please contribute to the discussion by posting a comment below.

Sources

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Core GBRI Methodology Sources

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• International Monetary Fund (IMF). Financial Development Index (FDI): Dataset Portal https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.MCM%3AFDI (data.imf.org)

• International Monetary Fund (IMF). About Financial Development Index (Methodology Overview) https://data.imf.org/en/Datasets/FDI/About-FDI (data.imf.org)

• Svirydzenka, K. (2016). Introducing a New Broad-based Index of Financial Development. IMF Working Paper WP/16/05 https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp1605.pdf (IMF)

Financial Depth Proxy Sources Used for GBRI Snapshot

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(Used where direct harmonized IMF depth values were unavailable or where blended market depth estimates improved comparability.)

• World Bank. Global Financial Development Database Includes indicators for private credit, financial institutions, stock markets, bond markets, access, stability, efficiency. https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/gfdr/data/global-financial-development-database (World Bank)

• World Bank DataBank / World Development Indicators. Domestic Credit to Private Sector (% GDP) Common proxy for bank-led financial depth. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS

• World Bank DataBank / World Development Indicators. Market Capitalization of Listed Domestic Companies (% GDP) Common proxy for equity market depth. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/CM.MKT.LCAP.GD.ZS

• World Bank DataBank / World Development Indicators. Stocks Traded, Total Value (% GDP) Liquidity / capital market activity proxy. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/CM.MKT.TRAD.GD.ZS

• Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Debt Securities Statistics Proxy for local bond market depth. https://www.bis.org/statistics/secstats.htm

• OECD Global Pension Statistics Proxy for long-duration domestic institutional capital pools. https://www.oecd.org/finance/private-pensions/globalpensionstatistics.htm

Ease of Doing Business Component

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• World Bank Group. Doing Business 2020: Comparing Business Regulation in 190 Economies Final full Doing Business report. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/688761571934946384/pdf/Doing-Business-2020-Comparing-Business-Regulation-in-190-Economies.pdf

• World Bank Group. Doing Business 2020 Rankings and Scores https://archive.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings (data.imf.org)

English Proficiency Component

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• EF Education First. EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) Global ranking of adult English proficiency. https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/

• EF Education First. EF EPI Methodology https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/about/

Education Quality Component

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• OECD. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) https://www.oecd.org/en/about/programmes/pisa.html

• OECD. PISA 2022 Results Volume I https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2022-results-volume-i_53f23881-en.html

• OECD. PISA 2022 Database https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/pisa-2022-database.html

Supporting Comparative / Validation References

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• World Economic Forum. Global Competitiveness Reports (archived series) https://www.weforum.org/reports/

• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Human Development Reports / HDI https://hdr.undp.org/

• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Global Innovation Index https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/

• StartupBlink. Global Startup Ecosystem Rankings https://www.startupblink.com/

• Startup Genome. Global Startup Ecosystem Report https://startupgenome.com/reports

Statistical Methodology References

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• OECD. Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators Widely cited reference for normalization, weighting, aggregation. https://www.oecd.org/sdd/42495745.pdf

• World Bank. Composite Indicator Guidance / Governance Indicators Methods https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/

Notes on GBRI Snapshot Construction

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• Financial Depth scores in the GBRI snapshot were based primarily on IMF FDI concepts, supplemented where necessary with blended proxies such as:

  • private sector credit / GDP
  • stock market capitalization / GDP
  • debt securities / GDP
  • pension / insurance / fund assets
  • observed market sophistication

• Ease of Doing Business used World Bank Doing Business 2020 scores.

• English used EF EPI rankings / scores.

• Education used OECD PISA 2022 Math + Science + Reading totals.

• Inputs were normalized to a 0–100 scale using min-max normalization prior to weighting and aggregation.