Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan Make Significant Progress in the World Bank’s Doing Business Ranking 2019

We congratulate the Governments of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan with their countries’ substantial improvements in the World Bank’s Doing Business Ranking 2019. 

Azerbaijan has moved from 57th place in 2018 to 25th place, and is among the ten economies to have made the most emphatic improvement in performance on the Doing Business Indicators compared to 2017-2018.

Azerbaijan has implemented eight reforms that makes it easier to do business since 2017-18. The country has opened a single window at the Baku City Executive Office for dealing with construction permits thereby reducing the time required to obtain a building permit by 80 days. 

The country has doubled its Getting Credit score to reach 80.00 largely as a result of the introduction of a new secured transactions law and insolvency law, which has brought the implementation of a functional secured transactions system, broadened the scope of assets that can be used as collateral, and provided better conditions for secured creditors. Azerbaijan has also set up a unified, modern and notice-based collateral registry, and has improved access to credit information by establishing a new credit bureau.

According to the 2019 rankings, Kazakhstan is among 46 economies that improved the most across three or more Doing Business indicators in 2017/18, and moved overall from 36th place in 2018 to 28th. 

The country has made notable progress in the following areas: making it easier to start up a business by reducing the time required for value added tax registration; allowing for smoother cross-border trade by introducing an electronic customs declaration system (ASTANA-1 IS) as well as by reducing customs administrative fees; and in enforcing contracts by making judgments rendered at all levels in commercial cases publicly available and publishing performance measurement reports on local commercial courts. 

“PMCG is particularly delighted with this positive news, as we, together with our partners and international institutions, strive to deliver progress. We would like to once again congratulate the governments of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan on such remarkable progress and wish them both even more success in the nearest future,” said David Lezhava, Public Policy Sector Director at PMCG.

Follow this link for more detailed information:

http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/reports/global-reports/doing-business-2019