Project Insight: uncovering the complexities of global value chains

Updated 8 July 2026

Global value chains (GVCs) form the backbone of production and trade – linking firms, sectors and economies through complex production networks with direct implications for the real economy and financial system. Despite their importance, supply chains remain poorly understood at the granular level. For central banks and policymakers, this presents a clear challenge. Aggregate statistics cannot capture the granular linkages, transmission channels and early structural shifts that shape GVC dynamics well before they appear in headline data. Shocks can propagate through supply chain networks in ways that amplify inflationary pressures, mask concentration risks and generate spillovers to the broader financial system. In a highly interconnected global economy, improved understanding and monitoring of GVC dependencies can help central banks fulfil their core mandates of safeguarding monetary and financial stability.

Project Insight, led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), explores how various forms of granular and macroeconomic data, combined with advanced analytics and visualisation tools, can strengthen the monitoring of GVCs. The project developed a proof-of-concept (PoC) interactive dashboard that transforms detailed supply chain information into actionable insights that can help central banks in detecting emerging vulnerabilities and supply chain bottlenecks, and in understanding shifting global trading patterns.

The project was carried out by the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre in collaboration with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and DIW Berlin. It also brought together a global stakeholder group of supply chain experts spanning central banks, international organisations, academic institutions and the private sector.

Project Insight draws on a historical snapshot of granular supply chain data and combines detailed commercial data sets on firm-to-firm relationships, maritime shipments, entity characteristics and ownership linkages with publicly available macroeconomic data. The project developed a modular and scalable data architecture that includes extensive data preprocessing steps, a harmonised set of metrics capturing multiple dimensions of GVCs, and a custom-built, interactive dashboard created using open-source, modular and component-based tools.

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