Here’s a pretty cool resource for companies looking to expand globally, and carefully picking which countries to get involved with, and even which regions of countries to go into.

The World Bank has a resource that, in their words, “provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 181 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level.”

For example, did you know that the easiest country in the world for “dealing with licenses” is St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and that China ranks 175th in that category? Or that the World Bank ranks India  highest in the number of these regulatory categories reformed in the past 5 years?

The site is much deeper than it may appear on the surface. If you go deep enough, you can find the specific steps required for starting a business in any given country, and how long each step takes. 

If you’re at all involved in global business development, this is a site worth bookmarking and exploring.

http://www.doingbusiness.org