WASHINGTON, October 25, 2016 – Russia continued on its reform efforts to improve the business climate for small and medium-sized businesses, says the World Bank Group’s latest ease of doing business report.
Doing Business 2017: Equal Opportunity for All, released today, ranks Russia 40th out of 190 measured economies.
The country performs well in the areas of Registering Property and Enforcing Contracts. For instance, it takes less than a year to settle a commercial dispute in Russia, compared to the global average of 637 days. And it only takes 15 days to register a property transfer, which is less than three times the global average of 51 days. In the area of Getting Electricity, on the “Reliability of supply and transparency of tariff” index Russia continues to score higher than the OECD average.
The report also finds that in the past year dealing with construction permits was made easier by removing the requirements to obtain permission to fence the construction site and obtain approval of the architectural and urban planning design for non-residential buildings. The reform, which applies to the city of St. Petersburg, has reduced the time needed to obtain permission to build a warehouse to 262 days, from 278 days earlier.
“In past years, Russia has been active in reforming across multiple areas of business regulation,” said Andras Horvai, World Bank Russia Country Director. “In some aspects of Doing Business, the business regulatory environment of Russia is now closer to best practice. However, to foster more growth opportunities for local firms, there is room for improvement on several fronts measured by the Doing Business indicators and beyond, in particular to increase competition in the economy.”
In the area of Trading Across Borders, streamlining the formalities for border compliance would reduce the time and cost involved in trading across borders thereby benefiting both exporters and importers.
This year’s report includes, for the first time, a gender dimension in three indicators: Starting a Business, Registering Property and Enforcing Contracts. As in OECD high income countries, in Russia there are no barriers against women in the areas measured by the report.
The report also includes an expansion to the Paying Taxes indicator, which now also covers post-filing processes, such as tax audits and VAT refunds. Russia scores relatively well on these measures. For example, it only takes 7 hours to comply with the VAT refund process, which is a shorter time than in Norway (where it takes 9 hours) or Sweden (where it takes 11 hours).
The full report and accompanying datasets are available at https://www.doingbusiness.org/
