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November 3, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 11
Small countries are big reformers on the World Bank's Doing Business index
bne IntelliNews
Aside from their reforming zeal, the top performers from the CEE/CIS region on the World Bank’s latest Doing Business index have another thing in common: they all have populations of under 4mn.
Georgia (population 3.7mn), leads the region taking ninth place globally, and is the only lower- middle-income country to rank among the
top 10 countries in the world for ease of doing business, according to the influential ranking released by the World Bank on October 31.
In the last 14 years, Tbilisi has made more business regulation reforms — 47 in total — than any of the top 20 ranked countries, which include much wealthier economies like Sweden, Finland, Canada, France or Australia. The pace of reform continued through 2017, with Georgia rising seven places on the 2018 ranking.
Next among the CEE/CIS countries is Mac
edonia (population 2mn), last year’s regional champion, which fell one place to a still very commendable 11th.
Macedonia has soared up the ranking in recent years as the conservative VMRO-DPMNE government launched reform after reform with the aim of attracting export-oriented investment to boost the local economy and bring down the high unemployment rate.
Now that VMRO-DPMNE has been dramatically ousted, following two years of unrest culminat- ing in an invasion of the parliament by angry protesters, the new government led by the So- cial Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) has pledged to further improve the business climate in the country.
Prime Minister Zoran Zaev recently said that the government will implement a plan guided by six principles, which will