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Georgian Economy is fourth in the region, World Bank says

By Tea Mariamidze
Thursday, October 29
In the new rating, prepared by the World Bank and referring to the ease of doing business, the Georgian economy is in fourth place in the Europe and Central Asia Region category.

The research report is called “Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency”, and it was released on October 28.

The World Bank Group’s annual business research revealed that over 90 percent of the economies in the Europe and Central Asia region implemented reforms to improve their business climate during the last year.

“Among the leading countries in Europe and Central Asia Region, Georgia is in fourth place after Macedonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Globally, for the last 12 years Georgia has improved its indicators most of all. During this period, the volume of production per capita in Georgia increased by 66%, while the number of newly registered enterprises increased more than three times,” the measurement of the World Bank reads.

“Georgia remains a top performer on the ease of Doing Business,” said Eavan O’Halloran, World Bank Acting Regional Director for the South Caucasus.

According to him, the Georgian economy is one of 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 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 contributes 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,” O’Halloran stated.

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

“Of the five indicators that saw changes in this report – Dealing with Construction Permits, Getting Electricity, Enforcing Contracts, Registering Property and Trading Across Borders – Europe and Central Asia has performed well and this has positively impacted the global rankings of many of the region’s economies,” the research reads.