Doing business in 2005. Removing obstacles to growth

Doing Business in 2005: Removing Obstacles to Growth is the second in a series of annual reports investigating the scope and manner of regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. New quantitative indicators on business regulations and their enforcement can be compared across 145 countries - from Albania to Zimbabwe - and over time.

The previous report, Doing Business in 2004: Understanding Regulation, presented indicators in five main topics: starting a business, hiring and firing workers, enforcing contracts, getting credit and closing a business. Doing Business in 2005 updates these measures and adds another two sets: registering property and protecting investors. The indicators are used to analyze economic and social outcomes, such as productivity, investment, informality, corruption, unemployment, and poverty, and identify what reforms have worked, where and why.

The next edition, 'Doing business in 2006', was published in August 2005 (ISBN: 0-8213-5749)

World Bank: Doing Business website http://www.doingbusiness.org/Default.aspx

World Bank: Press Release, No.69, 2005: Doing Business in 2005: Recent EU entrants are top reformers while others in the region struggle to reduce red tape for business, miss large growth opportunities http://un.by/en/news/belarus/2004/08-09-04-2.html

World Bank: Doing business in 2005: Overview http://rru.worldbank.org/Documents/DoingBusiness/DB-2005-Overview.pdf

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