SUMMARY
The subject of the study in the article is a comprehensive analysis of the external environment in terms of the country's competitiveness. The goal of the work is to substantiate the scientific and methodological foundations of a comprehensive analysis of the external environment according to the level of a country's competitiveness within the framework of strategic monitoring in the system of ensuring the financial and economic security of the state, the region, and business entities. The following tasks were solved in the article: reasonably hierarchical relations in the process of strategic monitoring implementing in the financial and economic security ensuring system of the state, region, business entities; reviewed the hierarchy of strategic monitoring levels in the system of national economic security; characterized by information flows of the strategic monitoring organization levels; describes the process of using information by economic entities at various levels of government in order to implement strategic monitoring; systematized international approaches to the construction of competitiveness countries ratings; analyzed the place of Ukraine in international competitiveness ratings. The following methods are used: abstract logical analysis, theoretical generalization, system and statistical analysis. The following results were obtained: we proved that the strategic monitoring at the regional and local levels, as a rule, has hierarchical relationship with the inherent characteristics of all hierarchical systems; the economic security of any economic entity is formed under the influence of environmental factors at the global, national and regional levels; a country's competitiveness is considered as a set of properties inherent in the national economy, which determine a country's ability to compete with other countries; according to the analysis of key international ratings of competitiveness of the country, Ukraine first of all needs to concentrate its efforts on fighting against corruption and rational macroeconomic policies implementing. Conclusions: strategic monitoring in the system of the financial and economic security ensuring of the state, region, business entities in the framework of conducting a system analysis and forecasting changes in the global competitiveness of countries should be a significant measure of the system-integrated implementation to counter existing threats to ensure the state national interests protection as the basis viability and conditions for further progressive country development.