MEASURING INVESTMENT ATTRACTIVENESS AND ECONOMIC SECURITY: A COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL INDICATORS AND ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORKS, WITH EVIDENCE FROM UZBEKISTAN

International rankings and indices are widely used in investment promotion, but they measure different things in different ways and often tell different stories about the same country. This article compares ten frameworks that investors, rating agencies and governments use to judge investment attractiveness and economic security: Doing Business, B-READY, the Index of Economic Freedom, the Worldwide Governance Indicators, the Corruption Perceptions Index, the WJP Rule of Law Index, UNCTAD and balance-of-payments FDI statistics, sovereign credit ratings, IMF external-sector assessments and composite vulnerability indices. Each framework is classified by construct, data basis and design weaknesses, and Uzbekistan is used as a test case. Uzbekistan stands higher in indices of rules and openness (53–64 per cent of ranked countries are below it) than in indices of integrity and enforcement (31–43 per cent). Headline numbers also depend on definitions: foreign investment for 2025 is USD 43.1 billion in national statistics but USD 4.4 billion as net equity inflows in the balance of payments, a ratio of almost ten to one. The evidence is descriptive and rests on a small number of indices. I argue that no single framework is enough, that numerical rank targets create incentives that need managing, and I propose a five-layer dashboard that reads rules, enforcement, realised investment, the external balance sheet and the market’s verdict together.