World Bank’s updated Doing Business rankings

The World Bank recently corrected its Doing Business rankings after review of data irregularities. After the corrections, China’s ranking has been lowered by seven notches.

What is the issue?

In August 2020, the World Bank decided to pause the publication of its Doing Business Report after number of irregularities regarding changes to data in previous reports. Changes are being made and these changes are to be reflected in the next report that is due in March 2021.

What are the updates?

• The World Bank says that China should have been dropped by seven places, that is to 85^th rank rather than remaining in 78^th. This is in accordance to the Doing Business report, 2018. The irregularities that were corrected in the 2018 report were getting credit, starting a business and paying taxes indicators. After correcting these indicators, the Doing Business 2018 score of China was 64.5.
• With reference to the Doing Business Report, 2020, World Bank says that the Saudi Arabia ranked at 62^nd earlier should have been placed at 63^rd.
• The scores of UAE were also changed. However, it remained at the same spot despite of the changes.
• Azerbaijan was moved to one of the top ten improvers. The rank of Azerbaijan was updated to 28. Earlier, it was ranked at 28^th.

About Doing Business Report

It is published annually. The report consists of quantitative measures of regulations such as dealing with construction permits, starting a business, registering property, employing workers, getting credit, trading across borders, protecting investors, enforcing contracts, closing a business and getting an electricity connection.

Reasons for recent controversies

According to the experts, the controversies that has raised recently with Doing Business report of World are due to following reasons:

• The indicators are referred to costs and fees of doing business in the country. It considers the measurements and indicators only in largest business cities. In reality, these conditions elsewhere in the country might differ.
• The estimates of the report are created based on the assumption that a business knows what is required and does not waste time.
• The cost estimates are made by individuals identified as experts. Sometimes, the estimates provided by one individual will differ from the other.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2020