By David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The World Bank on Thursday launched its revamped business and investment climate survey of 50 economies, with Hungary, Estonia and Singapore taking the top spots in three categories designed to avoid the problems that prompted it to scrap the scandal-plagued “Doing Business” rankings in 2021.
The new and scaled-back “Business Ready” report now covers three main measures of a country’s business climate – the quality of regulations, effectiveness of public services such as electricity and tax administration and operational efficiencies.
The World Bank three years ago discontinued the widely followed Doing Business rankings that focused on reducing regulatory burdens after an independent probe revealed that senior leaders of the bank had pressured staff to alter data to boost China’s ranking.
The probe also cited data irregularities that boosted rankings of other countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan.
None of these countries were included in the 50-economy sample that launched the new Business Ready report, though Hong Kong was included.
The World Bank is now seeking to de-emphasize country rankings in the report, which measures 1,200 items in 10 categories that correspond to a firm’s lifecycle from startup to labor rights to business insolvency procedures.
“We actually don’t even use the word rank in the report,” Norman Loayza, director of the World Bank’s Global Indicators Group told Reuters. “We prefer to talk in terms of scores, which actually can be understood as business readiness percentages or even fractions.”
Overall, the 50 surveyed economies averaged a score of 65.5% on regulatory matters but only 49.7% for public services, indicating they are half as ready for business investment as they should be, according to the report.
Hungary had the highest regulatory framework score at 78.23%, followed by Portugal, Georgia and the Slovak Republic.
Estonia scored highest in public services, at 73.31% followed by Singapore, Croatia and Portugal. Singapore, which often led the defunct Doing Business rankings, scored highest in operational efficiency at 87.33% followed by Georgia, Rwanda and Estonia.
GRADUAL EXPANSION
Next year’s survey will be expanded to 110 economies, including the United States and China, and a full complement of 180 economies would be included in the 2026 survey, Loayza said.
The bank sought a sample of low-, middle- and high-income economies from all geographic regions for the first report where adequate data could be collected from surveys of thousands of local private sector experts as well as directly from companies doing business in these jurisdictions.
Although some wealthy economies such as Singapore and Hong Kong scored well, Loayza noted that some low-income countries such as Rwanda scored well in a number of categories.
“This gives us a ray of hope that low income economies, poor economies, can also achieve good business environments, and with that, the expectation of growth.”
To guard against undue influence in the scores, the bank has instituted new data protection protocols, including separating collection and analysis from other parts of the institution and publishing all collected data as well as software that would allow observers to replicate the results presented in the report, Loayza said.
The bank also has instituted new whistleblower protections for any employees who report potential conflicts of interest.
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
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