Job opportunities for regulatory experts

1/Washington (World Bank)

Network friend and top RR expert Peter Ladegaard has points us to an advertised position of Senior Regulatory Governance Specialist, a Washington DC based job anchored in the World Bank's new Governance Global Practice's Regulatory Policy and Management Team. 

"The selected candidate's work program is expected to focus on a combination of knowledge management and client-facing, operational activities. In particular, the candidate will take a leading role in developing and delivering activities under the donor-funded Good Regulatory Practice Program, which will assess and further adapt tools to improve the governance dimension of good regulatory practices. This will involve knowledge development and pilots in areas including Notice-and-Comment, Regulatory Impact Assessment, and to some extent indicators of Good Regulatory Practices."

Full job description and application link on page mentioned above.

2/ Beirut (EU-funded simplification project).

ACE International Consultants is looking for a regulatory reform long term expert based in Beirut to work on the project reported on several occasions on this blog. See November 2014 post for all details about the project. The position is that of key expert on the technical assistance team.

To apply, contact ACE.

Deregulation on the agenda for Iraki KRG judges

Following up on previous workshops held in Erbil and Granada in 2012, a new session was held in Ankara earlier this month to complete a cycle of professional training in legislative drafting for judges of the Kurdish region of Iraq (KRG). Funded by the World Bank, supported by the Turkish government and moderated by your blogger (C.H. Montin), this workshop brought together the same judges belonging to the Shura Council (Consultative Assembly) of the KRG and a team of international experts. The judges and experts exchanged information and views focused on the "cutting edge" of better regulation: deregulation techniques supporting the improvement of the regulatory environmnent of business. Course members actively discussed the relevance of national practice of neighbouring countries (Lebanon and Turkey) as well as advanced legislative techniques presented by D. Macrae (UK) and E. Maurice (Lithuania), and sought to draw lessons for their own work. The course was given a practical illustration by visits to the Turkish Constitutional Court and Council of State. Among the techniques examined at this session the most promising were held to be: the "guillotine", statute law revision and in-built review and sunset clauses. Some of the moderator's slides on "Techniques" and "Deregulation" are also made available on this blog.

For a very good introduction to the subject matter, see "Tools and Approaches to Review Existing Regulations" published by the World Bank which gives an overview of the numerous techniques and good examples of their implementation.

Independent review of Doing Business index

E. Schizas points us to a very interesting document, the report of the Independent Panel Review of the Doing Businessranking. This review comes at a time when this publication is facing renewed criticism, already reported here (30 May)To try to give an idea that this is well worth checking, here are some of the "concerns" highlighted by the Panel (extracts):
"The Doing Business report has the potential to be misinterpreted"
"The report relies on a narrow information source. "
"The report only measures regulations applicable to categories of business that can be captured through its methodology."
"The report’s data-collection methodology can be improved."
"The report does not provide a tool to enable countries to respond appropriately to low overall ranking."

Threat to our beloved "Doing Business"

According to All Africa, "an independent review panel is expected to soon release its findings regarding the World Bank's "Doing Business" report. Speculation abounds that the panel might recommend outsourcing "Doing Business", removing the "ease of doing business" rankings, or even eliminating the report altogether.
This challenge is not a new one, as powerful World Bank shareholders have been trying to sink the project since its inception in 2002. Now China, the world's second largest economy and an ever more influential force within the Bank, is seeking to water down the report by eliminating, among other things, its country rankings. For more, go to All Africa, the article explains why it would be a great loss if this index of regulatory reform progress was suppressed. (From Emmanouil Schizas, London)
PS: just after posting this, I noticed the leader in The Economist (25 May) under the title: "Stand Up for 'Doing Business'" which gives more detail about the on-going enquiry into the ranking, and strongly supports keeping this indicator. "The president of the World Bank should support one of its most useful products."

Doing Business: become a contributor !

The World Bank Group is seeking specialists to participate in its pro bono global research project. The Doing Business Report is a publication of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation that benchmarks business regulation in 185 countries worldwide. To volunteer for research work, visit "become a contributor" page.

How regulation influences companies' location

Emmanouil Schizas (London) points us to an interesting article published by the World Bank and entitled "Is better information always good news ? international corporate strategy and regulation." This paper develops a simple model to analyze the interaction between strategic corporate public good provision, international firm location and national regulation. An information-based strategic corporate public good provision mechanism is proposed to shed light on recent firm behavior within different regulatory environments.

Doing Business 2013 just released

Today the World Bank and IFC release the 10th edition of their flagship report: "Doing Business 2013: Smarter Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises" assesses regulations affecting domestic firms in 185 economies and ranks the economies in 10 areas of business regulation, such as starting a business, resolving insolvency and trading across borders. This year’s report data cover regulations measured from June 2011 through May 2012. Over the past decade, these reports have recorded nearly 2,000 regulatory reforms implemented by 180 economies.

 

Key findings (from the official site):

• Poland was the global top improver in the past year. It enhanced the ease of doing business through four institutional or regulatory reforms, making it easier to register property, pay taxes, enforce contracts, and resolve insolvency.
• Besides Poland, nine other economies are recognized as having the most improved ease of doing business across several areas of regulation as measured by the report: Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Burundi, Costa Rica, Mongolia, Greece, Serbia, and Kazakhstan.
• Worldwide, 108 economies implemented 201 regulatory reforms in 2011/12 making it easier to do business as measured by Doing Business. Reform efforts globally have focused on making it easier to start a new business, increasing the efficiency of tax administration and facilitating trade across international borders. Of the 201 regulatory reforms recorded in the past year, 44% focused on these 3 policy areas alone. Read about reforms.
• Singapore topped the global ranking on the ease of doing business for the seventh consecutive year, followed by Hong Kong SAR, China,; New Zealand; the United States; and Denmark. Georgia was a new entrant to the top 10.

IMF seminar on goblal regulatory developments

From an IMF press release dated August 31, 2012:
"The scope and intensity of the recent financial crisis, and the significant risks posed by financial institutions viewed as too important to fail, have brought to the fore the importance of strengthened financial sector regulatory reform to make the financial system safe. In this context, the IMF organized today a one-day seminar at the IMF-Singapore Regional Training Institute to take stock of progress on refining the regulatory framework and to define the current challenges in the design of the reform agenda, particularly in the Asian context.The seminar—titled Evolving Financial Regulatory Framework—is part of an extended series of events in advance of the October 2012 IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Tokyo, Japan. Panelists and participants, who included officials from central banks and regulatory agencies in Asia, private sector representatives, academics, journalists and IMF staff, discussed key issues in global regulation pertaining to both banks and capital market intermediation. They also discussed how the Asia-Pacific region is prepared to deal with the changes envisaged in the international regulatory framework as well as the future directions and implications for the financial system in the region.
Participants agreed that the regulatory reform agenda was still a work in progress and highlighted some of the implementation challenges and unintended consequences of regulation that may arise. Issues that drew particular attention were related to the impact of new capital and liquidity regulations; supervision and resolution of systemically important financial institutions (both banks and nonbanks); home-host cooperation; potential extra-territoriality arising from national initiatives; and implications from new regulation on capital market-related intermediation."

KRG judges practice smart regulation

Funded by the World Bank and supported technically by INSTEA and the OECD-MENA Governance Programme, a workshop was organised earlier this week for a group of judges and assistants belonging to the Shura Council (Consultative Assembly) of the Kurdish Region of Iraq. The purpose of the session was to review legislative drafting techniques to accommodate the new requirements placed on the judiciary by regulatory reform objectives. Course members actively discussed the relevance of international examples of best practice and sought to draw lessons for their own work. Your blogger, who participated in the event, was impressed by the expert legal tradition and the determination of the judges to support the rule of law and democratic principles in their work. This workshop also gave a practical example of the issue addressed in the previous post (the relation between sound legislative drafting and better regulation).
For more, see similar projects of the WB in KRG, and examples of legislation in the KRG. Also check the regulatory quality resources produced by the OECD-MENA programme (drafting manual, guide to consultation, etc.)

Kenyan regions more competitive

At the end of June, the World Bank issued its second report on comparative ease of doing business at the infranational level in Kenya.
It shows, using the Doing Business method, that over the past two years, all 13 cities have improved business registration processes while 2 cities expedited the approval of construction permits. Joint reform efforts by the national and local governments have reduced the average time to start a business by 22 days and the average cost by 5%. Mombasa is the city that saw most improvements across 3 out of the 4 areas measured. Due to a broad based business reform program, starting a business is more than one month faster today than in 2009; while the opening of a specialized court in September 2011 paved the way for more efficient commercial dispute resolution. This report, which measures the impact of regulatory reforms, offers encouragement to Kenyan reformers.

How does smart regulation support competitiveness?

While we all agree that regulatory reform directly contributes to a better regulatory environment for business, we rarely stop to examine how effective this contribution can be, and how it combines with other policies to improve a country's economic performance relative to its competitors. Your blogger was invited by the Chinese Taipei ministry of finance to investigate this topic for a roundtable with the vice-minister and senior staff of the ministry last month. The resulting presentation published online examines various academic contributions and national approaches to competitiveness, to ascertain the place of regulatory reform: in short regulatory competitiveness is one one of the three pillars of economic competitiveness with competition policy and the infrastructure policy. The detailed Powerpoint takes stock of the various stages of regulatory reform from deregulation to smart regulation and examines current varieties practiced by countries and international groups.
A worldwide tour of economic performance in national and intergovernemental policies shows inter alia that approaches come under different banners corresponding to governement priorities. Supported by the economic research of the Global Competitiveness Forum, several countries have set up competitiveness bodies (the European Commission, Sweden, Ireland and many others), while others prefer the more economically mainstream concept of productivity (following in the Australian model, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines and others). The US and India apply both concepts while Mauritius entrusts the two objectives to the same organisation. Other countries seem to believe that public policy should not interfere with the use of factors of production and prefer to seek growth and jobs primarily via other interventions: France and Germany favour making the administration more efficient, the UK emphasizes efficient markets with its Competition Commission. Most of the others closely watch the Doing Business index and make raising their ranking a national priority.

Ukraine needs to reform inspections (IFC)

A study by IFC published last week found that the system of permits, inspections, and technical regulations in Ukraine remains a burden for businesses, costing them nearly $900 million last year and hampering their efforts to grow and create jobs.
The IFC study, “Investment Climate in Ukraine as Seen by Private Businesses 2011,” surveyed approximately 2,000 businesses and found that 46 percent of them resorted to unofficial means to resolve issues with state officials. Ukrainian companies surveyed spent an average of 10 percent of company revenue in 2010 to comply with official regulations.
“Less regulation and a transparent economic environment will help promote growth and enable Ukrainian businesses to attract more investments,” said Elena Voloshina, IFC Head of Operations for Ukraine. “Ukraine has made some positive steps forward to ease the regulatory burden for private businesses over the past year. However, poor implementation and the slow pace of reforms remain among the key barriers to private sector growth.”
Since 2009, Ukraine has made some progress, particularly in the reform of technical regulations. However, the IFC study found that local entrepreneurs have not fully benefitted from the regulatory changes due to the low level of implementation, which significantly undermines the reform process.
The study also recommended steps to improve the investment climate. These steps include decreasing the number of permits and the number of businesses subject to licensing; extending the scope for self-certification; enforcing the use of inspections checklists; and streamlining norms and requirements.
IFC’s Ukraine Investment Climate Advisory Services Project is supported by the Canadian International Development Agency; the Dutch Agency for International Business and Cooperation; the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency; and Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, SECO.

APEC links RR with trade and green growth

There is a lot of conceptual material to be found in the proceedings of the 2011 APEC ministerial meeting held in Honolulu, Hawai, on 11 November and chaired by Ms Clinton. In a “Declaration of Honolulu – towards closer regional economic ties,” APEC Ministers committed to take action to strengthen economic integration and expand trade, promote green growth and advance regulatory convergence and cooperation, to achieve economic growth in the region. The statement published on the APEC site and the annex F on regulatory issues provide rich reading. Here are the main chapters (our unofficial summary):

• "Regulatory Cooperation on Emerging Standards and Regulatory Issues for green growth": the objective is to prevent unnecessary technical barriers to trade, support interoperable emerging standards for smart grids, green buildings, and solar technologies.
• Approval of a "Regulatory Cooperation Action Plan" to inter alia improve the efficiency and effectiveness of regulations, build public trust in regulations, improve consumer confidence in globally traded products and encourage implementation of the APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform;
• Regulatory Convergence: streamlining approval procedures for Medical Products , harmonised classification of Chemicals, cataloguing regulations on Services, reducing unnecessary testing and streamlining paperwork on Wine certification and trade procedures, raising common Food Safety rules, including closer alignment on international standards (with APEC-World Bank collaboration).

In summary, a fine example of effective regional regulatory cooperation.

OSCE-supported 'regulatory guillotine' (Armenia)

An Armenian radio bulletin announces the launch of a legal simplification programme to be conducted over the next 2 years, using the "regulatory guillotine" approach. The project will involve reviewing and streamlining the national regulatory frameworks affecting business activity and the daily lives of citizens. Throughout the duration of the project, a Joint Dialogue Forum will be facilitate the exchange of information and further discussions between stakeholders. Other donors are contributing: the Austrian Development Agency , USAID, the World Bank and UNDP. For more, see previous posts about Armenia.

Doing Business 2012 studies 245 business regulatory reforms

Released today, Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World assesses regulations affecting domestic firms in 183 economies and ranks the economies in 10 areas of business regulation, such as starting a business, resolving insolvency and trading across borders. This year's report data cover regulations measured from June 2010 through May 2011. The report rankings on ease of doing business have expanded to include indicators on getting electricity. The report finds that getting an electrical connection is most efficient in Iceland; Germany; Taiwan, China; Hong Kong SAR, China; and Singapore.

The global report shows that governments in 125 economies out of 183 measured implemented a total of 245 business regulatory reforms—13 percent more reforms than in the previous year. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a record 36 out of 46 economies improved business regulations this year. Over the past six years, 163 economies have made their regulatory environment more business-friendly. China, India, and the Russian Federation are among the 30 economies that improved the most over time.

This year, Singapore led on the overall ease of doing business, followed by Hong Kong SAR, China; New Zealand; the United States; and Denmark. The Republic of Korea was a new entrant to the top 10.  The 12 economies that have improved the ease of doing business the most across several areas of regulation as measured by the report are Morocco, Moldova, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Latvia, Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, Burundi, the Solomon Islands, the Republic of Korea, Armenia, and Colombia. Two-thirds are low- or lower-middle-income economies (from the press release.)

BR in EU, OECD, World Bank: differences & similarities

Better Regulation has been for some time on the agendas of these three major organisations. But do their policies and programmes have the same underlying principles, or does the same vocabulary cover different realities. That is what the author of this blog was asked to explore for a stakeholder event to be held next week. The major lesson from this comparison is that each organisation pursues policies in keeping with its overall mandate, and that the dissemination of the advantages of improved regulatory quality can be sought in a variety of ways:

• OECD, by drawing out lessons learnt from best practice, after discussion in its international forum, the regulatory policy committee, and making recommendations to members and partners;
• EU, by applying the principles to its own regulatory production, and getting its member states to follow suit, to improve the image of EU law and contribute to competitiveness;
• WBG, by assisting mainly developing and transition countries in tackling the practical challenges, regulatory and others, to improve the business environment and investment climate.

The text of the Powerpoint presentation is on line at http://regplus.eu/documents/fee.pps

Sub-Saharan Africa attracts FDI

According to a report by Kenyan paper Business Daily, a reduction in red tape and an improvement in political conditions means that sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a more attractive destination for foreign direct investment, especially from India. This theme was highlighted at a conference organised by the South African Institute of International Affairs where experts from India and Africa examined ways of deepening engagement between South-South economies.The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) is highly attuned to Regulatory Reform issues and publishes reports focusing on ways to improve the business climate, with detailed studies on NTBs. Its site also promotes the African Peer Review Mechanism, an interesting tool for the 21 members (2006 figure) to work together to implement reforms to achieve better governance and consolidate democracy. A conference will be held on 28 June by SAIIA to monitor progress of APRM in Southern Africa.
For background on RR in Africa, see paper by IFC coordinator P. Ladegaard and the proceeds of the Mombasa meeting of the Network of Reformers (already summarized on this blog).

BR supports EAC regional integration

Your blogger attended a P2P learning event in Mombasa last week where the five countries of the East African Community, joined by neighbouring states (Zambia, RDC) and OHADA, shared ideas and exchanged best practices about building the Common Market launched in 2009 between Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. The Investment Climate Advisory Services of the World Bank Group, organiser in partnership with Kenya and donors, had placed the event under the banner of Regulatory Reform and invited experts from the EU and ASEAN to draw lessons from these more integrated groups on how to apply RR principles to manage regulation, harmonize national commercial laws, monitor implementation of reform by the use of scorecards and efficiently inspect enforcement.

All material will soon be online (URL so be communicated here), following the two previous events in Arusha 2008 (on cutting red tape) and Kampala 2010 (multi-level). Participants also gave updates about their respective RR projects and results and called for the development of a regional set of regulatory quality standards similar to the OECD ones. See also press report.

Uganda launches regulatory reform

Last week, Uganda launched a regulatory reform programme with World Bank support. According to the press release, the reform program will focus on reducing regulatory costs and risks associated with obtaining business licenses, and on simplifying and reducing taxes for small and medium enterprises. Uganda’s legal and regulatory regime is cited as one of the biggest challenges constraining the country’s private sector. A recent World Bank Group study of Uganda’s business licensing regime puts the annual private sector regulatory compliance costs at $175 million per year, which represents 1.3 percent of the country’s GDP.

Uganda is not alone in this venture: regulatory reforms are pursued across the region and are boosted by the adoption in November 2009 of the Common Market Protocol, which should lead to measures to ease doing business and harmonised laws that guarantee the region's competitiveness to help its economies are to surpass the current level of investments.

In a follow up to last year's peer-to-peer reformers meeting in Arusha, the World Bank Group convened another meeting in Kampala recently to assess progress and how much ease has been created for businesses to operate in the region.

The Bank's experts say the region now requires more business-friendly regulation and faster legislation of business laws, preferably handled by the region's parliament. Reforms are also needed in tax payment systems, land registration and business licensing.

This work is supported by the Investment Climate Advisory Services of the World Bank Group which helps governments implement reforms to improve their business environment, and encourage and retain investment, thus fostering competitive markets, growth and job creation. Funding is provided by the World Bank Group (IFC, MIGA, and the World Bank) and over fifteen donor partners working through the multi-donor FIAS platform

Doing Business 2011: regulatory reform going strong

Last month the World Bank issued its new edition of its famous Doing Business survey, which is well worth studying as it reports on global progress towards better regulatory management. In the past year, governments in 117 economies carried out 216 regulatory reforms aimed at making it easier to start and operate a business, strengthening transparency and property rights, and improving the efficiency of commercial dispute resolution and bankruptcy procedures.

There are some unexpected changes which demonstrate  the diversity of the possible approaches, and the complexity of what makes economies attractive. SMEs have often been the targeted beneficiaries of the improvements to the business climate.

For the fifth year running, Singapore leads in the ease of doing business, followed by Hong Kong SAR China, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Among the top 25 economies, 18 made things even easier over the past year.

Kazakhstan leads the list of countries having improved business regulation for local entrepreneurs which also includes three in Sub-Saharan Africa— Rwanda (a consistent reformer of business regulation), Cape Verde, and Zambia—as well as Peru, Vietnam, Tajikistan, Hungary, Grenada, and Brunei Darussalam.