The World Bank has just released the first edition of the Business Ready report, a new publication that assesses the business climate in 50 economies. From the outset, this new report from the WB group reveals that “when it comes to the business environment, economies perform better in their regulatory efforts than in the provision of public services necessary to achieve real progress.
The first edition of this report, notes the press release, “provides a vast data set – 1,200 indicators for each economy – to identify areas for improvement and encourage reforms”. According to the WB, this report will have to be enriched over the next three years, to reach complete coverage of around 180 economies in 2026, thus offering “a global reference and comparison tool”.
In almost all of the 50 economies assessed this year, the press release notes, the quality of the regulatory framework is higher than that of the public services provided to promote compliance with the provisions by businesses. “These loopholes” in implementation pose a barrier to these businesses, workers and society in general seeking to take full advantage of the benefits that a good business climate provides. “On a scale of 0 to 100, according to this report, economies obtain an average score of 65.5 for the quality of their regulatory framework, which means that they have come, in this category, about two-thirds of the way path to a fully functioning business environment.
On the other hand, they only obtain a score of 49.7 when it comes to their public services, only half of the level they should achieve. This gap is observed at all income levels and in all regions, but it is smallest in high-income economies, says the WB, and in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East region. and North Africa that it is the most important.
In other words, public services remain a sort of force of inertia compared to what the business climate regulations provide. “Business Ready provides governments with the information they need to create the conditions that enable businesses to generate prosperity for their shareholders, consumers and workers while caring for the planet,” said Indermit Gill , chief economist and first vice president of the World Bank Group for Development Economics, who considers: “As demographics, debt and conflicts weigh on economic growth, we can only progress by mobilizing all the ingenuity of private enterprise.”
According to the press release, the Business Ready report, which succeeds the Doing Business project, reflects a more balanced and transparent approach to assessing the business and investment climate. “This approach,” he notes, “benefited from the recommendations of experts from the World Bank Group and other horizons: government circles, the private sector, civil society organizations and university researchers, in particular.”
Related News :