There are already a number of “indices” that assess the relative performance of countries with respect to the business environment and investment climate. Although some of them may include SMEs in the sample, they often display a bias towards larger companies and multi-nationals, and generally they treat the national sample as a whole without considering sub-groups of companies within a country.

Broadly, current instruments with the objective of assessing the general environment or specific aspects of the overall environment can be divided into the following categories:

1. Instruments concerned with national competitiveness: the most well known of these are the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report and IMD´s competitiveness scorecard. Whilst the latter has a strong macro-economic bias, the former encompasses macro-, meso- and micro-economic elements and has undergone a significant transformation over the years. It aims to be exhaustive in its coverage of factors that make up the environment.

2. Instruments related to investment attractiveness: there are a large number of instruments at international or regional level which assess the country´s attractiveness to investors based on the evaluation of a series of factors or by surveying actual and potential investors to obtain their perceptions.

3. Instruments related to digital connectivity of the country: the objective of these instruments is to score a country on the extent to which it has embraced the digital age. Two important instruments are the Global Information Technology Index of the World Economic Forum and the Economist Intelligence Unit´s e-readiness report.

4. Corruption and transparency is another element that is subject to specific indices, the principal proponent being Transparency international.

5. The regulatory environment is addressed through the Word Bank´s Ease of doing Business Report, which implicitly has an SME focus as it bases its assessments on a common profile of a “typical” company: a small manufacturing business.

6. Indices relating to international connectivity. Given the international bias of this study, it is worth mentioning the World Economic Forum´s “Enabling Trade Index” in this context.

7. Indices relating to entrepreneurship activity.

A range of indices measuring attractiveness of business environment (the list should not be considered to be exhaustive).