Washington, D.C., November 4, 2010Timor-Leste has increased court efficiency by training and appointing new judges and passing a new civil procedure code, according to the Doing Business report launched today. However its regulatory environment in which local firms do business still lags behind other East Asian economies.
Doing Business 2011: Making a Difference for Entrepreneurs is the eighth in a series of annual reports published by IFC and the World Bank. For the first time in eight years, the economies of East Asia and the Pacific were among the most active in improving the regulatory climate in which local firms do business. Timor-Leste ranked 174 out of 183 economies.
“IFC is keen to assist the government to realise business climate reforms underway such as streamlining of business start-up processes and improving access to credit, which will enable small and medium-size businesses to flourish and create jobs,” said Milissa Day, IFC’s Timor-Leste Country Manager.
World-wide it is easiest for local firms to do business in Singapore, Hong Kong SAR China, and New Zealand. Vanuatu, at rank 60, is the top performing country in the Pacific region.
The Marshall Islands improved business regulations most among Pacific nations in the last year, moving up 15 places to 108, by strengthening its legal framework to facilitate access to finance with a new secured transactions law. The law establishes a collateral registry and broadens the range of assets that can be used as collateral. Solomon Islands also passed a new secured transactions law and established a collateral registry, improving its ranking by 10 places to 96. In Papua New Guinea, a new private credit bureau that makes it easier for lenders to provide entrepreneurs with finance helped to improve the country’s ranking by five places to 103.
Samoa used new information technologies to become the most improved economy globally in the area of property registration. Samoa reduced the time required to register property by four months by shifting from a deed system to a title system and fully computerizing its land registry.
About the Doing Business report series
Doing Business analyzes regulations that apply to an economy’s businesses during their life cycle, including start-up and operations, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business. Doing Business does not measure all aspects of the business environment that matter to firms and investors. For example, it does not measure security, macroeconomic stability, corruption, skill level, or the strength of financial systems. Its findings have stimulated policy debates in more than 80 economies and enabled a growing body of research on how firm-level regulation relates to economic outcomes across economies.
For more information about the Doing Business report series, please visit: www.doingbusiness.org
About the World Bank Group
The World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries. It comprises five closely associated institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Each institution plays a distinct role in the mission to fight poverty and improve living standards for people in the developing world. For more information, please visit www.worldbank.org , www.miga.org, and www.ifc.org.
Adjustments to 2010 Rankings:
Doing Business 2010 rankings were retroactively adjusted to reflect the removal of the Employing Workers Indicator from the aggregated calculation of rankings. The Employing workers indicator (EWI) methodology is currently being reviewed by internal and external consultative groups, with the aim of getting a good balance between worker protection and efficient employment regulation that favors job creation. Since the consultative process is not complete, the employing workers indicator will be in an Annex of the Doing Business 2011 report and it will not be factored into the rankings. The new indicator Getting Electricity will also not be included in the rankings.
Contacts for region-specific queries on Doing Business 2011:
East Asia and the Pacific
Hannfried von Hindenburg +852-2509-8115Carl Hanlon +1 (202) 473-8087
E-mail: hvonhindenburg@ifc.org E-mail: chanlon@worldbank.org
(See attached file: Timor-Leste Doing Business Press Release Final.doc)
Barbara Ratusznik
Communications Associate
Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea & Pacific Islands
The World Bank
Level 19, 14 Martin Place
Sydney NSW 2000
P: +61 2 9235 6563
F: +61 2 9235 6593
bratusznik@worldbank.org
www.worldbank.org/pi
See also (on East Timor Law Journal) Developments in court administration: Timor- Leste 2007 JSMP Justice Up Date October 2007
1 comment:
Let's not be fooled by this propoganda from the World Bank. If the donors and government were serious about a strong judiciary, the'd be paying the judges proper salaries to remove an incentive for corruption, provide appropriate infrastructural and technical amenities, fix up the registries, get the courts functioning where they are supposed to so that better access to justice is possible, pubishing laws in Tetum and conducting community legal education enabling people to deploy the justice system, and ensuring the strict upholding of the independence of the judidiary from executive and political domination. Then they might be able to boast about increasing efficiency.
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