Georgia came fourth of 101 countries on Business Ready

Business Ready, usually shortened to B-READY, is the World Bank's assessment of the conditions firms operate under, and it took over from the long-running Doing Business report. The structure is different: rather than a single composite rank built mainly from procedural counts, it assesses economies across regulatory framework, public services and operational efficiency. In the 2025 edition Georgia placed 4th among 101 countries overall, and 2nd on operational efficiency. The country coverage doubled from 50 economies in 2024 to 101, and the indicator criteria were expanded at the same time — both of which make a strong placing more meaningful than it would have been in the narrower first round.

Second place on operational efficiency is the figure most relevant to anyone doing a transaction here rather than studying the country from outside. It is about how easily the rules can actually be complied with — how long things take, how many counters you have to visit, whether the information you need is available. That is the experience a foreign buyer actually has when registering a title or forming a company, and it lines up with what buyers here commonly report: the registration itself is fast and cheap, and the hard part is the commercial diligence, not the paperwork. A high operational score does not mean the underlying rules are generous, only that they are workable.

The Public Registry credits two things in particular: its systematic land registration reform, and the innovations introduced under the Law of Georgia on Entrepreneurs. It also points to accessible services, simple registration procedures and transparency of information. Systematic land registration is the unglamorous one and probably the most consequential for a foreign buyer — a registry where titles have been systematically mapped and recorded is the difference between diligence that takes a day and diligence that takes a month, and it is why an extract from the registry is a usable answer to the question of who owns a plot. None of this removes the need to check a specific title. It does mean the check is possible.

A high B-READY placing is a statement about the machinery of doing business, not a forecast of returns. It says the company registry works, the land registry works, and compliance is not an obstacle course. It says nothing about whether a particular building will fill, what rents will do, or how a currency will move. Rankings also compare a country against the rest of the field rather than against its own past, so a rise can reflect other countries slipping. Used properly, this is the answer to one specific question a cautious foreign buyer asks early — can I actually transact here, and will the paperwork hold? On that question, fourth of 101 is a credible answer.