The interdepartmental working group will take up the issue of improving Armenia`s position in Doing Business rating

ArmInfo. According to the published World Bank rating Doing Business - 2018, Armenia not only did not retain its positions, but slid down. This fact at the meeting of the RA Government had to be ascertained by RA Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan.  According to him, the report shows that the republic, in spite of improvement of five indicators out of 11, however, by 9 points deteriorated its rating. At the same time, as the prime minister noted, in others the progress of Armenia is obvious. In particular, in the index the global competitiveness of the World Economic Forum Armenia moved from the 79th place to the 73rd, and in the index of economic freedom, calculated annually by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation research center, the republic rose from the 54th to the 33rd horizontal.

Nevertheless, as stated by Karen Karapetyan, the WB report testifies that from now on the issue of improving Armenia's positions in the Doing rating

Business should become a matter for every responsible person. The prime minister recalled that earlier they had been given orders that were aimed at resolving precisely those positions in which the decline was noted - judicial and legal system, administration when granting permits, etc. A package of legislative initiatives to address these problems has already been submitted to the National Assembly. The Prime Minister instructed the Minister of Economic Development and Reforms to submit proposals to the Government to organize reforms in this direction, and to carry out constant monitoring of the progress of their implementation. In addition, it was entrusted to submit a proposal on the creation of an interdepartmental working group headed by the Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Investments, which will coordinate this work. The head of the Center for Strategic Studies was instructed to form the necessary expert group in order to provide each state structure with the necessary methodological assistance.

To recall,  Armenia worsened its position in the Doing Business ranking - 2018, which reflects the simplicity of doing business in countries. The country dropped by 9 positions and is located on the 47th place among the 190 countries included in the study. In Armenia, the process of obtaining electricity has been simplified, and property registration has been simplified by improving dispute settlement mechanisms in the land use system. At the same time, out of 11 calculated components of the indicator of ease of doing business, Armenia improved the indicator of "starting a business" by 0.59 points (15th place), "building permission" - by 0.02 points (89th place), "connection to power networks" - by 5.36 points (66th place), "real estate registration" - 0.42 points (13th place), "bankruptcy recognition" - by 0.08 points (97th place).  Armenia ranked between Italy (46th place) and Hungary (48th place). The republic occupies the penultimate place among the EEA countries: Russia in 35 place, Kazakhstan - 36, Belarus - on 38, and Kyrgyzstan - on 77 place. The Doing Business project, which began in 2002, focuses on the activities of national small and medium-sized enterprises and the assessment of regulations that regulate their activities throughout the life cycle.