Top 10 Reformers Receive Doing Business 2008 Award

For the second year, IFC and the World Bank have welcomed top reforming countries to the Doing Business Reformers Club to recognize their success at reforming business regulation. Ministers from seven countries—Bulgaria, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt, Georgia, FYR Macedonia, and Saudi Arabia—recently accepted awards on behalf of their governments at an event held at the New York Stock Exchange. They also shared reform lessons and future plans with investors, dignitaries, sponsors, and the media.

The awards are based on the IFC-World Bank Doing Business 2008 report, which presents quantitative analysis on business regulation across 178 economies. Rankings are based on 10 indicators that track the time and cost to meet government requirements in business start-up, operation, trade, taxation, and closure.

This year's recipient countries have simplified starting a business, strengthened property rights, enhanced investor protections, improved access to credit, eased tax burdens, and cut the cost of importing and exporting. The Top Reformer Egypt was the world's top reformer, with improvements in five of the 10 areas studied by Doing Business. The country has:

• Reduced costs for starting a business from 50,000 Egyptian pounds to 1,000 and cut start-up time by half
• Reduced the cost of registering property from 3 percent of the value to a low, fixed fee
• Reduced the cost of dealing with licenses
• Launched one-stop shops for traders at ports, cutting import time by seven days and export time by five
• Made it easier for borrowers to access credit information by establishing a new private credit bureau

The reforms have led to new jobs and businesses, as well as benefits for the government. The cut in property registration, for example, resulted in more registrations and less evasion, with government revenues from title registration jumping by nearly 40 percent in the six months after reform.

Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, Egypt's Minister for Investment, said, "What I like about Doing Business is that it creates a forum for exchanging knowledge. It's no exaggeration when I say I checked with the top 10 [reformers] in every indicator, and asked them, 'What did you do?' And we were pleased that some friends from African and Arab countries asked us, 'How did you manage to do the one-stop shop, how did you manage to do the reforms in your customs, and how did you introduce the credit bureau system in that fast-track approach?' I think it's very much a two-way street."

Doing Business has stimulated public debate, created pressure for reform action, and inspired close to 200 reforms over the past five years.

Luis Guillermo Plata, Colombia's Minister of Commerce, said, "Reform is not like following a cake recipe. It's not enough to know the ingredients and how other cooks have mixed them up. But it certainly helps to know what cakes other reformers have baked. I read Doing Business because it provides information on what reforms happened where, and what effects they had."

Celebrating Reforms

The Doing Business Reformer's Club was established in 2007 to recognize the efforts of top reformers, inspire other would-be reformers, and engage with investors who value the potential of reforming economies. Reforming business regulation takes leadership, vision, and energy—often in the face of daunting practical and political challenges.

Improving regulations is important to enable a thriving private sector, create jobs, promote growth, and raise living standards. A growing body of research using five years of Doing Business data is tracking the impact of regulatory reform on these economic and social outcomes.

This year's event was cosponsored by General Electric, JPMorgan, NYSE Euronext, PricewaterhouseCoopers, PricewaterhouseCoopers Legal, the Trade Association for the Emerging Markets, the United States Council for International Business, and USAID.

For more information contact:

Rebecca Ong
Communications Officer
Phone: +1 202 458-0434
E-mail: rong@worldbank.org