Opinions & Interviews

MINSK, 31 October (BelTA) - The package of documents to promote economic liberalization due to be adopted in Belarus soon will have an impact on the country’s position in the Doing Business 2019, the Economy Ministry told BelTA while commenting on the report released by the World Bank Group on 31 October.

Belarus ranks 38th in the Doing Business 2018 out of 190 economies. The latest report measures reforms implemented from 1 July 2016 till 1 July 2017. "In the designated period, the authors of the report acknowledged that Belarus strengthened access to credit by adopting two new decrees that establish a unified collateral registry. Given the particulars of the reporting periods of the Doing Business study, the package of documents to improve the business environment, to promote the development of small and medium-sized enterprises prepared in Belarus this year and partly enacted will have an impact on the country's position in the Doing Business 2019,” the Economy Ministry said.

Belarus was 37th in the Doing Business 2017 published in October last year. The shift occurred due to the improved position of Russia that ranked 40th last year. This year it moved up to 35th beating Kazakhstan (35th in 2017 and 36th in the Doing Business 2018), Slovenia and Belarus. New Zealand tops the Doing Business 2018.

The Economy Ministry stressed that Belarus is now half a percentage point closer to the “frontier” which represents the best performance observed on each of the indicators across all economies in the Doing Business sample since 2005. It is 75.06 points for Belarus on the Doing Business 2018 (74.51 in last year’s report). The Distance to Frontier complements the annual ranking of the ease of doing business and shows how the local regulatory framework is close to the world’s best practices. The higher the score (on a scale from 0 to 100), the better the business environment is and the stronger the legal institutions in the country are. The position of Belarus on the Distance to the Frontier has been improving each year. The current report shows that the gap between Belarus and the best performers calculated on the basis of the best indicators for all countries and for all years is 24.94 points,” the ministry noted.

Belarus traditionally ranks high on the Registering Property indicator (5th on the Doing Business 2018). It is also in top 30 in Getting Construction Permits (22nd), Enforcing Contracts (24th), Getting Electricity (25th), Trading Across Borders (30th) , Registering Property (30th). According to the World Bank, Belarus has performed better on such indicators as Protecting Minority Investors - 40th position (+2 points), Resolving Insolvency - 68th (+1), Getting Credit - 90th (+11), Paying Taxes - 96th (+3).

Since the first publication of the report in 2004, Belarus has been implementing reforms across all Doing Business indicators. Belarus ranks fifth among 190 economies by the number of business-friendly reforms undertaken since then (37 reforms according to the World Bank).