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CAERC talks World Bank's suspension of "Doing Business" report

Economy Materials 17 September 2021 20:30 (UTC +04:00)
CAERC talks World Bank's suspension of "Doing Business" report

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17

By Zeyni Jafarov - Trend:

The World Bank (IBRD) has decided to completely stop publishing Doing Business reports. A press release published on August 27, 2020, stated that the publication of the report was postponed due to the falsification of results, Ayaz Museibov, the head of the department of the Center for Analysis of Economic Reforms and Communications of Azerbaijan (CAERC), told Trend.

Thus, the World Bank conducted a systematic assessment of both internal and external audits over the past five years with the involvement of a third-party audit company (WilmerHale Company) in order to eliminate inaccuracies in the reports.

If the World Bank report for 2020 had not falsified the results, China would have shifted by seven positions, and Saudi Arabia one step lower, the UAE-would have remained at the same level, Museibov said.

After making adjustments to the Doing Business report prepared based on the results of audits, the indicator of Azerbaijan increased by 6 steps – from 34 to 28 place.

In some cases, the reports of Doing Business reflect the opinions of the world press about the biased attitude towards countries. So, at the moment, the world's leading media reports that, during the diagnostic assessments carried out, the bank's management gave instructions to artificially increase the results in favor of some countries. There are claims that the factors of increasing the organization's investments affect the results of a number of some countries.

Leading print media, such as Reuters and Kommersant, say that the reforms carried out in Azerbaijan are not taken into account in the Doing Business reports. Among the four countries (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, China and Azerbaijan), the results of which were not properly reflected in the report, only Azerbaijan's indicators were artificially underestimated by some experts of the structure, and a number of reforms carried out were not reflected at all in the estimates, Museibov said.

"It was announced that in the future, the World Bank, which is committed to developing the business and investment climate in the organization's member countries, will conduct methodological studies based on new approaches to assess these conditions," the head of the department noted.

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