More on Doing Business
Doing Business has received worldwide coverage from the media, researchers, and public officials. Here's what some have had to say in past years:
In the News
Doing Business reports have received extensive coverage in all major media outlets -- from global to regional and throughout local media, including print, broadcast, and Web. Here is a sample of what’s been said over the years.
Doing Business 2009
"Doing Business did two things that were not quite so obvious: it put precise numbers on things that people had known about only vaguely, and it allowed citizens and investors to compare their country with 180 others."
-- The Economist, 12 March 2009
Doing Business 2008
All too many countries have underdeveloped property systems and make it difficult to establish new businesses legally. Doing Business is hardly casual reading, but it gets to the true essentials of a country's ability to grow.
-- Steve Forbes, Forbes, June 30, 2008
"The most important lesson for Latin America from the World Bank's report is that its competitors around the world are working to unleash entrepreneurial spirits, and doing nothing is not an option."
-- The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2007
"The [Doing Business] report should be a wake-up call for Latin American countries. If cutting red tape and removing obstacles to employment helps attract investments and reduce poverty everywhere else in the world, it's time to do away with demagoguery and do the same in Latin America."
-- San Jose Mercury News, October 1, 2007
"This report serves as a reminder that one of the most compelling roles for the World Bank is to generate this sort of data, which is an expensive yet invaluable public good."
-- Financial Times, September 26, 2007
"The astonishing cost of doing business in many countries around the world has been laid bare by a new World Bank report."
-- Daily Telegraph, September 26, 2007
Doing Business 2007: How to reform
"The new report is designed largely as a tool for helping governments to make the kinds of reforms they need to attract fresh foreign investment, and to raise their nations' living standards."
-- Journal of Commerce, September 18, 2006
"The 2007 edition was released last week and, not surprisingly, finds that poor countries could be much better off if only they would stop discouraging legal, tax-paying business activity."
-- Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2006
"In publishing Doing Business, the World Bank is producing a public good: measurements of regulatory performance that may become as indispensable to reformers and to academics as national income accounts."
-- Financial Times, September 6, 2006
"The Bank's "Doing Business 2007" report underlined that straightforward changes, like enabling investors to set up a company online, could do wonders for a country's business climate and so encourage its economic growth."
-- Channel News Asia, September 6, 2006
Doing Business in 2006: Creating Jobs
"Last November, we argued that data from the World Bank's report, then titled "Doing Business in 2005," was a useful starting point in an international stock search."
-- Forbes Magazine, September 21, 2005
"The World Bank's "Doing Business" report: A helpful exercise in quantifying business regulations and their costs."
-- The Economist, September 15, 2005
"The Doing Business in 2006 report shows all major economic players - the government, management, and labor - have their own roles to play to improve the situation. In other words, it hinges on whether a nation can get rid of corrupt bureaucrats, unethical managers and conceited labor leaders."
-- The Korea Times, September 15, 2005
"For the first time, the bank’s Doing Business report provided an overall ranking for the ease of conducting business in its 155 countries, at the behest of Paul Wolfowitz, who took over as bank president in June. In the past it has only listed the top performers, partly to avoid offending those at the bottom."
-- Financial Times, September 13, 2005
Doing Business in 2005: Removing Obstacles to Growth
"If one accepts the report’s findings that reforms in many of those areas are key to promoting growth, then its conclusions make depressing reading. They indicate that not only will the gap between the rich and poor be maintained, but it is likely to widen further as regulations in poor countries stifle enterprise..."
-- Sunday Times, South Africa, September 13, 2004
"The report is a mine of useful as well as disturbing information, and something of a handbook for how to put things right. It finds that poor countries impose on average three times the administrative costs and twice the number of bureaucratic procedures as rich countries…"
-- The Economist, September 11, 2004
"Red tape does strangle economies, rich or poor. In case anyone doubted this, Doing Business in 2005, a study by the World Bank makes it clear. As a general rule, richer countries make it easier and faster to start up businesses, protect property rights, hire and fire people, borrow money and collect debts…The Bank wants poorer countries to get their act together in ways that almost any government can manage if it wants to."
-- The Times, U.K., September 9, 2004
"The World Bank's project has generated a large amount of interest and is developing fast. The signs are that it will start to fulfill its ambition to create a set of regulatory 'indicators' of equal importance to macro-economic indicators in the assessment of a country's development."
-- World Market Research Center Perspective, U.K., September 9, 2004
Doing Business in 2004: Understanding Regulation
"It, however, deserves careful study and consideration at the highest levels by our policy-makers, especially as it brings out many possible chinks in our industrial policy."
-- The Hindu Business Line, India, October 20, 2003
"It is chock full of fascinating statistics and anecdotes that make the case for property rights and sensible regulation more forcefully than any political treatise could… All governments can learn something from this study -- including the one in Washington, D.C."
-- The Chicago Tribune, USA, October 15, 2003
"It offers one of the first consistent, rigorous portraits of the costs of business regulations in poor countries. It also offers a healthy balance to the usual debates about the merits and demerits of capitalism."
-- The Economist, October 11, 2003
"…the World Bank's thoroughness in compiling hard data to support the obvious is an undeniable service."
-- The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2003
Research
Academic Citations: Through June 2007, the 10 research articles that serve as background papers for Doing Business generated 676 academic papers. Learn more...
Independent Evaluation: The Senior Vice President and Chief Economist requested an independent evaluation of all research activities carried out by the World Bank between 1998 and 2005. The Terms of Reference calls for a panel of "world class specialists in their field” to evaluate 186 research projects. According to the final report, An Evaluation of World Bank Research, 1998 – 2005, the goal was to "evaluate the publications from the sample projects paying particular attention to reliability, rigor, completeness and relevance and, in addition, to give their overall assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Bank research in their area of expertise based on the sample and their general knowledge of Bank research."
Antoinette Schoar of Massachusetts Institute of Technology was appointed to evaluate Doing Business. (MIT): In Schoar’s submission to the panel, Evaluation of Doing Business (2004, 2005 and 2006 Reports), she notes:
"Doing Business is one of the most influential research initiatives that the IFC and the World Bank have ever undertaken. It has put the focus on improving the efficiency of government policy and ignited a vigorous discussion in emerging markets."
"The methodology to collect data on the business regulations which was developed by the Doing Business research team is highly innovative. The researchers set up a systematic procedure to survey professionals that are familiar with the details of the regulations in their country."
"Overall the implementation and execution of the data collection was very carefully conducted and has undergone several refinements and improvements. The Doing Business reports have created a very robust and reliable set of benchmark measures on regulation which are being used world wide by practitioners and academics alike. They have become a major source of country indicators on the regulatory environment of businesses in world wide. Moreover, by engaging a cadre of first rate academics (such as Oliver Hart, Andrei Shleifer and others) the World Bank team ensured that the data collection would be guided by the latest theory and empirical research in economics and finance."
Country Feedback
Sample feedback from top political figures and regulators:
G8 Action Plan for Growth in Africa
"National regulatory frameworks should be strengthened to attract and retain private capital. Complicated regulatory barriers reduce incentives for African entrepreneurs to enter the formal economy. While a few African countries are making progress in simplifying business regulations, much is still to be done in most others. To this end, we encourage countries to use surveys, such as the World Bank's 'Doing Business Reports', as indicators of possible barriers to business and of reform efforts."
-- Official communique, June 14, 2008
Colombia
"We trust in Colombia because Colombia is reforming. It is reforming not to destroy value but to create value for the people by striking a good balance between the role of government and the role of the private sector. […] I want to congratulate the cities which rank first [in the Doing Business subnational report] and I want to congratulate in advance those who are not doing so well because they will soon be at the top."
-- Alvaro Uribe Vélez, President of Colombia (2008)
Croatia (a top 10 reformer in Doing Business 2008)
"We are proud that Croatia is recognized [by Doing Business] as a regional leader in reforms. As a country that will soon become a member of the European Union, we have a lot of advice for our neighbors, but there is also a lot we can learn from them. Croatia continues to develop a competitive and open economy, one that builds on the social and economic achievements of the previous era. It is important that we develop a regulatory environment that can guarantee the goals of the country's strategic development framework, both in the short and long term."
-- Miroslav Kovacic, State Secretary of the Central State Administrative Office for e-Croatia (2007)
Egypt (the top reformer in Doing Business 2008)
"What I like about doing business is that it creates a forum for exchanging knowledge. We have checked the best performers, and some of them happened to be in the region, some of them happened to be in Europe or Asia. So we just ask them "What did you do”? We need to capitalize on their experience, and we need to benefit from the advantage of starting late. If there is any advantage to starting late in anything, it is basically that you can learn from others.”
"It's not about the numbers, it's not about the statistics, it's not even about getting trophies for being number one in doing that or this, but the creation of job opportunities by facilitating the establishment of businesses in Egypt. What we see today are zones and regions that were not really [thriving with business] enterprises, now flourishing and complaining about something else: that they don’t really have adequate access to land, that they need the land to be supported with better infrastructure to expand further, and so on. So this kind of problem I am happy with because you can go and invest in infrastructure and give that support. But I am seeing the impact of all of these reforms [in the form of] decent jobs in the south of the country in Upper Egypt, which was always under privileged in sectors that didn't have any corporatization of business like the agricultural sector, of women who are considering going to the market today because they are seeing less and less hurdles and problems facing them when they are establishing enterprises.
-- Mahmoud Mohieldin, Investment Minister (2007)
Georgia
"Let me once again thank you for recognizing Georgia as the World’s Number One [Doing Business] reformer. I’d like to underline that the Georgian government is not allowing itself to relax on its achievements. We clearly understand that this is only beginning. This year, we expect to be recognized as a first world place to do business. Our goal, however, is to create a first world quality of life for Georgia’s citizens. We thank you for creating a matrix in which our achievements can be recognized and shared. Your medium is helping to give meaning to our message – Invest in Georgia – and to improve the lives of my constituency, Georgia’s citizens."
-- Mr. Zurab Nogaideli, Prime Minister of Georgia (2007)
Ghana (a top 10 reformer in Doing Business 2008)
"We will not get complacent with the moderate successes we have chalked so far over the last seven years, including the recent prize of good performance in the "Doing Business"... rather it will spur us on to examine other areas where we currently fall short and see how we can improve things."
--Mr. Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Ghana (2007)
Kyrgyzstan
"Kyrgyzstan shall rank among top twenty countries in the Doing Business rating in three years"
-- Akylbek Zhaparov, Minister of the Economic Development (2008)
Mexico
"The Mexican Federal Government maintains its commitment to support projects that promote competitiveness in the country, through the improvement of trade regulations and the elimination of administrative burden in order to facilitate the development for micro, small and medium enterprises.” [The Doing Business Subnational Report on Mexico] " …has helped [Mexico] to obtain a more objective view of the country as a whole."
-- Sergio Alejandro García de Alba Zepeda, Secretary of Economy, Mexico (2006)
Portugal
"Having in mind Doing Business, a big effort has been done to simplify (construction) licensing."
-- Maria Manuel Leitão Marques, President of the Office of Public Services Reform (2008)
Saudi Arabia (a top 10 reformer in Doing Business 2008)
"Under His Majesty the King's leadership, Saudi Arabia has acknowledged the importance of competitiveness and has set a goal for the Kingdom to become one of the top 10 most competitive countries in the world by 2010."
-- H.E. Amr Al-Dabbagh, Governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (2007)
"This recognition [among top10 Doing Business reformers] attests to the Kingdom's longstanding efforts to facilitate the role of private sector entrepreneurs... This was certainly a major step forward and I welcome the fact that this flagship publication of the World Bank Group is giving credit where credit is due."
-- Dr.Ibrahim AI-Assaf, Minister of Finance, Saudi Arabia's Governor at the World Bank Group (2007)
The Netherlands
"The 2008 report "Doing Business" fundamentally is about change and reform … The report gives the reader a view on the pace and range of reforms to ease doing business .. It also shows that business friendliness and strong social protection can go hand-in-hand, like in Denmark ... I highly welcome the increased sophistication of the Doing Business Report. It is unique to have quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 178 economies -- from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe -- and over time."
-- Bert Koenders - Minister for Development Cooperation, The Netherlands (2007)
Uzbekistan
"First of all, let me thank International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Doing Business team for the work carried out ... I further have the honor, on behalf of the Chamber, to confirm that the implementation of the project will help to expand the scale and sphere of our cooperation ..."
-- Alisher Shaykhov, Chairman, Chamber of Commerce and Industry
More Feedback
"The World Bank, meanwhile, has nurtured a network of more than 5,000 lawyers, accountants, freight forwarders, architects and public officials across the world to create a comprehensive database of indicators allowing it to compare the ease of starting and sustaining private businesses in 178 countries. The Doing Business Report has become one of the most relied-upon tools in the development world."
-- Thomas H. Davenport, Laurence Prusak and Bruce Strong, "Putting Ideas to Work: Knowledge management can make a difference -- but it needs to be more pragmatic," Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2008
"Today I would like to talk, in a sense go back to my deep roots, and talk about competitiveness and its influence and role in economic development … I am really beginning work now in Saudi Arabia. I am just thrilled that Saudi Arabia is now taking your world’s Doing Business Report rankings and setting goals based on those rankings, that is unthinkable in a place like Saudi Arabia only two or three years ago.
"I am the sole Chair of the GCR … we have a single integrated index. We use your data, the doing business study, which is remarkably important as part of the input for the GCR. So there is an opportunity for us here in this area … benchmarking, and also the underlined capacity for research on this topic that is created by having rich data across a large number of countries… and I would love to find a way to collaborate much more fruitfully with this organization in that initiative.”
-- Michael Porter, Lecture at the World Bank (April, 2008)