World Bank: Georgia 4th Best Economy in Europe and Central Asia

The World Bank Group has published an ease of doing business report, ‘Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency’, recording 58 reforms implemented in 23 of the European and Central Asian region’s 25 economies.

“The reforms implemented in Europe and Central Asia accounted for 25% of the 231 reforms implemented worldwide over the past year. The Region also boasted three of the world’s top 10 improvers, i.e countries that implemented at least three reforms moved up on the global ranking scale, these include Cyprus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan,” the report states.

Rita Ramalho, Manager of the Doing Business project says it is commendable that almost every single economy in Europe and Central Asia implemented at least one reform in the last year to improve the business environment. “The political commitment and hard work involved in implementing these reforms has allowed the region’s economies to break into the top performers on most of the indicators measured by the report.”

The record ranks Georgia the 4^th best economy in Europe and Central Asia, with Macedonia being the region’s highest ranking economy, followed by Lithuania and Latvia.

“Globally, Georgia improved the most in the areas measured by Doing Business over the past 12 years. During this period output per capita in Georgia increased by 66% and business density more than tripled. Many factors contributed to this improvement in economic outcomes, and the effort to make it easier for local entrepreneurs to do business may have been one of them.”

“Georgia remains a top performer on the ease of Doing Business,” World Bank Acting Regional Director for the South Caucasus Eavan O’Halloran stated.“It is one of only 18 economies in the region that implemented two or more reforms over the past year – making enforcing contracts easier by introducing an electronic filing system for court users and making and dealing with construction permits easier by reducing the time needed for issuing building permits. In this year’s report, there were significant changes in the scope and methodology that contribute to Georgia’s standing of 24 out of 189 economies. The main reason behind the drop with respect to last year’s published ranking is the new calculation of the ranking based on the methodology expansion.”

According to the report, this year’s Doing Business report completes a two-year effort to expand benchmarks that measure the quality of regulation and the efficiency of the business regulatory framework, in order to better reflect the reality of business operations on the ground.