World Bank

Doing Business Report is prepared by the World Bank. The World Bank was founded by the Bretton Woods Agreement to establish an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to help bankrupt countries during the Second World War. IBRD was established on December 27, 1945, and started its activity on June 25, 1946. At present, the World Bank Group consists of five specialized agencies – IBRD, International Development Association (IDA), International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

The headquarters of the World Bank Group is located in Washington, and the President of the organization is Jim Yong Kim since 2012. The organization, which has 189 member countries, has more than 130 representative offices with staff from more than 170 countries. More than 45 billion loans and grants have been allocated by the World Bank, 12 000 projects have been implemented.

The World Bank Group operates in major development areas. It helps countries to find solutions to their problems, apply innovative knowledge, provide financial and technical support. 

          The organization carries out its activities on two main missions:

            - Ending extreme poverty by 2030, reducing the world's extreme poor population by 3 per cent;

            - Ensuring overall well-being by increasing the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population of each country.

The World Bank Group has close relations with Azerbaijan. Thus, Azerbaijan is a member of all agencies of the Group −International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) since September 18, 1992, International Development Association (IDA) since March 31, 1995, International Finance Corporation (IFC) since October 11, 1995, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) since September 23, 1992 and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) since October 18, 1992. In 1996, the local representative office of the Bank was opened in Azerbaijan.

The World Bank has signed 11 projects in Azerbaijan since 2010. Among the projects are Agriculture, Water Supply, Construction of highways, Solid Waste Management, Living conditions and income opportunities of IDPs, as well as the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) project.

Doing Business Report

Doing Business Report prepared by the World Bank is prepared on an annual basis and is published annually on October 31st. It was first developed in 2002 and the first report was published in 2003. The first Doing Business Report evaluated 133 countries and 190 countries in 2017 and 2018.

Doing Business encourages countries to compete in the direction of more effective regulation by collecting and analyzing comprehensive data in order to compare the business regulatory environment in different countries in a certain period of time. It also offers measurable criteria for reforms, and also plays the role of a source of information for academics, private sector representatives, journalists, and other individuals interested in business.

The key objective of the Report is to regulate entrepreneurial activity and to measure its impact on the creation of new business enterprises and the conduct of business operations. Doing Business Report evaluates the business environment, efficiency, and effectiveness of business processes using 11 indicators and 45 sub-indicators. The 10 indicators contained in the Report together formulate the Ease of Doing Business Index. The Labor Market Efficiency Index is not taken into account here. Thus, the Ease of Doing Business Index is determined based on the indicators outlined in the table below:

The registration process of "Doing Business" is carried out consistently as stages of improvement of legislation, giving positive feedback as a result of practical implementation and use by entrepreneurs. Thus, four main sources of information are used in the development of the Report: relevant laws and legislative acts, the results of surveys conducted with respondents − entrepreneurs, the information provided by the government of the country and regional staff of the World Bank.