Doing Business

Truth be told, the Doing Business report has lost a significant part of its explanatory power, at least for countries in transition, due to political economy of reforms and disregard of the level of rule of law.

In October, the USAID Leadership in Economic Governance (LEV) Program held its final event. The project lasted for three years and made an important contribution to the policy of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) development in Ukraine.

Lithuania has long been praised for its rankings in the categories of starting a business, registering property, and enforcing contracts, but it has also been criticized for a heavy administrative burden and red tape pervading the areas of dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, and paying taxes.

Lithuania’s new Labor Code that was supposed to be flexible in balancing employee-employer interests is to take effect as of 1 July 2017. It was already approved by the previous government, but vetoed by the President. Therefore, its entry into force was postponed and so began the process of its improvement.

Ranked 20th in the 2016 World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, Lithuania has outstripped its closest neighbours Latvia and Poland. Yet, possibilities of forging ahead as one of the most business-friendly economies are not fully exhausted.

Lithuania outstripped its neighbors (Latvia and Poland) and once again was ranked among the top 20 countries in the world in terms of ease of doing business. But Lithuania’s competitors are not sitting around twiddling their thumbs, so last year’s achievement is not guaranteed for this year.

In the most recent ranking of the World Economic forum, which compares the competitiveness of 140 countries around the world, Slovakia ranked 67th. Since we ranked 8 places higher the year before, the media presented this as positive news.