Dushanbe, October 31, 2018 – Tajikistan has improved its regulatory environment, but at a slower pace than other countries, says the World Bank Group’s Doing Business 2019: Training for Reform report, released today.
Tajikistan simplified customs procedures for goods traded with Uzbekistan, narrowing the gap to best practice in global regulatory practice (or its “distance to frontier”) by 0.08 points to 57.11. Other countries with similar levels of business climate reformed faster, as Tajikistan’s small “absolute” improvement implied a small “relative” decline by three positions to 126th (out of a total of 190 countries surveyed worldwide).
According to the report, Tajikistan has improved in the indicator “trading across borders”, an outcome of the March 9, 2018 agreement between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on the organization of simplified customs procedures for goods traded between the two economies. This agreement introduced the Simplified Customs Corridor, streamlining the bilateral customs clearance for several types of goods. As a result, the “time to comply with export procedures”, measured in hours, reduced from 75 (in 2017/18) to 51 (in 2018/19).
Further increasing its policy focus on improving the business climate would not only improve Tajikistan’s overall ranking in the Doing Business report but also—and more importantly—provide the private sector with an environment that instils confidence and encourages a faster pace of investments, innovation, and employment creation.
“This year’s results in the Doing Business report show the strong focus of countries across all income levels to give investors the necessary confidence to invest and operate successfully in a given economy,” says Jan-Peter Olters, World Bank Country Manager for Tajikistan. “To succeed in global competition among countries for private sector’s know-how, capital, and efficiency, the report suggests implicitly that Tajikistan would need to build a solid long-term partnership with domestic and foreign enterprises and, in so doing, exploit the emerging opportunities inherent in newly accessible markets and the upgraded domestic infrastructure.”
The latest Doing Business and Human Capital Index studies both show that economies which focus on strengthened institutions to support the investment climate, and on quality education and health, are more likely to achieve higher rates of growth and income. Only with a dynamic private sector and a sufficiently healthy and educated workforce can countries compete in the global economy, sustain socio-economic development, and offer employment opportunities in well-paying, highly-skilled jobs.
The full report and its datasets are available at www.doingbusiness.org
To learn more about the Human Capital Index, please visit: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/human-capital
For more information on World Bank projects and activities in Tajikistan, please visit: www.worldbank.org/tj
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