Ukraine jumps 28 spots in World Bank’s Doing Business Report

The World Bank’s Doing Business Report
analyzes a number of indicators, such as registering a business,
paying taxes and enforcing contracts in every country to
compare the regulatory environments.

Ukraine jumped 145 points in dealing
with construction permits after it shed a number of bureaucratic
procedures over the past year. It was 186th in this category in the previous report.

Nevertheless, it still takes 10
procedures, starting from filing a request to obtain specification
requirements for building on a land plot, that last 73 days and cost 607.1 percent of income per capita to get permits to build a
warehouse in the business capital – an assumption used by the World
Bank for all economies to analyze this indicator.

Also, World Bank discovered that registering a property became
significantly easier over the past year, as well as getting a loan. Ukraine improved by 61 and 11 points in
these measurements, respectively.

Ukraine made a push to improve the
nation’s Doing Business ranking after President Viktor Yanukovych
instructed his government in January to get into the top 100 countries by 2014. The government followed up with analyzing
individual indicators and passing a number of new regulations for
improvement, but still fell short of the target.

Despite progress, Ukraine remains one
of the weakest performers in the region. Its neighbors Russia and
Poland are ranked 92nd and 45th in the
ranking, respectively.

In its report, the World Bank warned that
there are limitations to its methodology. “While this ranking tells much about the business
environment in an economy, it does not tell the whole story,” the
World Bank said. “The ranking on
the ease of doing business, and
the underlying indicators, do not measure all aspects
of the business
environment that matter to firms and investors or
that
affect the competitiveness of the economy.”

In Ukraine, the business community has
complained about the worsening of the business climate in the past
year. Hostile takeovers of businesses have been on the rise, and has
been capital flight and bullying by authorities, who are
struggling to meet ambitious budget revenue targets in a shrinking economy.

Ukraine’s  performance also worsened in
some areas measured by the World Bank. In particular, getting
electricity, protecting investment and resolving insolvency has
become harder over the past year.