WASHINGTON, 27 Oct. - (ANA) - Developing economies quickened the pace of their business reforms during the last 12 months
to make it easier for local businesses to start and operate, says the World Bank
Group's annual ease of doing business measurement report.

Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency finds that 85 developing economies
implemented 169 business reforms during the past year, compared with 154 reforms
the previous year. High-income economies carried out an additional 62 reforms,
bringing the total for the past year to 231 reforms in 122 economies around the world.

The majority of the new reforms during the past year were designed to
improve the efficiency of regulations, by reducing their cost and complexity,
with the largest number of improvements made in the area of Starting a Business,
which measures how long it takes to obtain a permit for starting a business and
its associated processing costs. A total of 45 economies, 33 of which were
developing economies, undertook reforms to make it easier for entrepreneurs to
start a business. India, for example, made significant improvements by
eliminating the minimum capital requirement and a business operations
certificate, saving entrepreneurs an unnecessary procedure and five days' wait
time. Kenya also made business incorporation easier by simplifying
pre-registration procedures, reducing the time to incorporate by four days.

Efforts to strengthen legal institutions and frameworks were less
common, with 66 reforms implemented in 53 economies during the past year. The
largest number of such reforms were carried out in the area of Getting Credit,
with 32 improvements, of which nearly half were undertaken in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"A modern economy cannot function without regulation and, at the same
time, it can be brought to a standstill through poor and cumbersome regulation.
The challenge of development is to tread this narrow path by identifying
regulations that are good and necessary, and shunning ones that thwart
creativity and hamper the functioning of small and medium enterprises. The World
Bank Group's Doing Business report tracks the regulatory and bureaucratic
systems of nations by conducting detailed annual surveys. For policymakers faced
with the challenge of creating jobs and promoting development, it is well worth
studying how nations fare in terms of the various Doing Business indicators,"
said Kaushik Basu, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President. - (ANA)

AB/ANA/ 27 October 2015 - - -