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Georgia among top 16 for doing business

By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Thursday, October 27
The World Bank Group has published a research Business Doing 2017 according to which Georgia is ranked 16th among 190 foreign nations.

According to the research, Georgia is third in the European and Central Asian region, ranking after high-rating countries such as Macedonia (former Yugoslavia) and Latvia. Georgia is also among those ten countries that have significantly improved their rates on a global scale.

Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili believes the report would be a “significant indicator for investors in invest in Georgia project”.

Minister of Economics Dimitri Kumsishvili stated the result was because of “effective and coordinative actions of the Government of Georgia”.

“The report proves Georgia’s economic policy is right and healthy,” Finance Minister Nodar Khaduri stated.

Meanwhile, the United National Movement opposition continues to criticize the Government's economic policies, saying the current authorities “artificially devaluate the national currency and take big foreign loans”.

'Doing Business 2017: Equal Opportunity for All', a World Bank Group flagship publication, is the 14th in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—and over time.

Doing Business measures regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking.

Data in Doing Business 2017 is current as of June 1 2016. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why.

The Doing Business 2017: Equal Opportunity for All report stressed that entrepreneurs in 137 economies saw improvements in their local regulatory framework last year.

Between June 2015 and June 2016, the report, which measures 190 economies worldwide, documented 283 business reforms. Reforms reducing the complexity and cost of regulatory processes in the area of starting a business were the most common in 2015/16, as in the previous year. The next most common reforms were in the areas of paying taxes, getting credit and trading across borders.