Cross Country Competitiveness Benchmarking

Cross Country Competitiveness Benchmarking is more than just an advanced version of the regular single-market research. It empowers you to compare and contrast multiple markets that are seemingly similar in competitiveness to identify the country most suited for your planned expansion or relocation.

By evaluating the competitiveness of a number of possible alternatives across areas such as political stability, economic growth, regulatory environment, availability and costs of labor, infrastructure and logistics connectivity, general operating costs, available free trade agreements and taxation policies and investment incentives, Cross Country Competitiveness Benchmarking enables you to make a more informed decision and choose the optimal location for your next business move.

Our Country Competitiveness Benchmarking service usually consists of the following two broad components:

1. Individual Country Assessments - Examining a range of areas of interest for the client such as political climate, economic environment, regulatory landscape, locations for manufacturing, general operating costs, labor availability and costs, logistics and infrastructure quality, and tax and tariff exposure.

   We draw our findings from a combination of desktop research, operational commentary from existing clients and contacts, and anecdotal experience from in-house or partner operations in the selected countries. Data for desktop research is sourced from government and intergovernmental databases.

2. Country Comparison – This includes a country competitiveness comparative matrix that ranks individual countries on all individual areas and parameters. Our final assessment not only focuses on providing the individual country assessments, which includes large-scale datasets as well as in-depth and high-level operational commentary from experts, but also focuses on providing conclusions for comparative purposes.

   To further make it easier for the client to compare individual countries on a multitude of factors, we provide the client a comparative matrix, that ranks individual countries on all individual areas and parameters and serves as a concise comparative assessment.

Political Climate: Introduce investors to the political climate of target countries, highlighting the level of their political stability, as well as the level of political risk to expect when investing in different locations.

Economic Environment: Evaluate key economic indicators that help investors to understand the prevailing and projected economic environment for manufacturing in the target countries.

Legal and Regulatory Environment: Provide a big picture of the regulatory environment and administrative procedures across countries to help investors understand how their operations will be treated in the target countries and the level of exposure to regulatory risks that they may face within the target markets.

Locations for Manufacturing: Locate and compare areas within the target countries that are suitable for manufacturing to help investors understand the regional differentiation of manufacturing within target markets.

General Operating Costs: Conduct a review of various utilities costs for industries in each target country to help investors understand the general operating costs that their operations will face in different target countries.

Labor Review: Evaluate labor status within target countries, including availability of skilled and unskilled labor, labor costs and labor regulations and best practices to aid investment decisions.

Logistics Review: Provide a review of prevailing logistics networks and associated costs within target countries to help investors understand the costs and time required to transport goods within and between markets.

Tax Review: Provide a statutory review of existing taxation policy and supplement these findings with commentary on the application of tax policy within target countries to support investors to understand the extent of their tax exposure in target markets.

With almost three decades of experience in helping foreign investors grow their business across Asia, we are experts in the dynamic emerging Asia market.

With 35 offices across China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia, in addition to a well-developed global network of leading industry partners, we are one of the largest integrated providers of corporate services in the region. Whether your organization is an MNC, a government agency, or a local SME, our dedicated team of researchers, business analysts, lawyers, tax experts, accountants, and HR & payroll specialists can help you cover your knowledge gaps of Asia’s markets.

Our critical methodology, combined with an agile approach, enables us to tailor our service to each client and effectively cater to their business intelligence needs at the highest level. When it is time, we can effectively assist investors with establishing and scaling up operations, as well as other compliance needs, providing an easy single-point-of contact for doing business across Asia.