What's New?
Recent updates to World Bank Group financial and private sector development websites are highlighted below. Direct links to these sites are provided to the right.
- How to Reform Business Licenses: This handbook is designed to assist practitioners in designing and implementing comprehensive "guillotine"-style reforms of business licenses. It features step-by-step guidance that is supported by checklists, as well as standard project documents and templates. This handbook draws from experiences gained through licensing reforms carried out in a wide range of developing and OECD countries. Download this handbook on reforming business licences.
- An Open Door for Firms - The Impact of Business Entry Reforms: This Viewpoint looks at the impact of business entry reforms on productivity and competition. Research shows that when registration procedures and costs are cut, more firms enter the market and a large percentage of new firms survive and grow. Further, new firms increase competition, forcing incumbents to catch up or exit the market. Read this Viewpoint on business entry reforms.
- Doing Business in Pakistan: A new report finds that provincial and municipal level reforms of business regulation in Pakistan are complementing nationwide reforms. Consistent reformers outperform others, but no single city does well on all the indicators measured by the report. Each of the 13 cities benchmarked in the report can learn from each other’s best practices. View this report on business regulations across Pakistan.
- Financial Crisis Data: How are firms in Eastern and Central Europe operating in the aftermath of the global financial crisis? Earlier this year, some 1,892 firms in Bulgaria, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey were asked about their sales, hiring decisions, R&D spending, and expectations about the future.
Doing Business in Nigeria: Progress in regulatory reform expands business opportunities
- Privatization Trends: A sharp decline but no widespread reversals in 2008
- East African Community 2010: The report looks at business regulations in five East African countries
- New toolkits: SME banking, secured transactions systems and collateral registries, tax simplification
- Women, Business and the Law 2010: The report measures legal gender parity in 128 economies across 6 topics
- Women, Business and the Law on Facebook: Receive updates and connect with others interestesd in the topic
