The World Bank Group has begun work to assess the business and investment climate in up to 180 economies under its flagship Business Ready project, which is a key instrument of its new strategy to facilitate private investment, generate employment and improve productivity to help countries accelerate development in inclusive and sustainable ways.

The project’s objective is to make each country’s economic environment ready for a dynamic private sector. The project's name highlights the fact that economies exist in different stages of readiness, and that governments play a key role in creating a business environment that is conducive for sustainable development, the organisation says.

Transparency will be a key feature of Business Ready’s safeguards for data integrity, it notes.

All information collected by the project, including raw granular data, scores, as well as the calculations used to obtain the scores, will be made publicly available on the project website. All results presented in the reports will also be replicable using straightforward toolkits available on the website, it says.

Business Ready improves upon and replaces the World Bank Group’s earlier Doing Business project. The first yearly Business Ready report will cover 54 economies and be published in 2024.

Business Ready focuses on ten topics covering the lifecycle of a firm in the course of starting, operating or closing or reorganising its activities, namely business entry, business location, utility services, labour, financial services, international trade, taxation, dispute resolution, market competition and business insolvency.

Over the next three years, the project will grow to cover about 180 economies worldwide a year, starting with 54 economies in 2023 to 2024, 120 economies in 2024 to 2025, and reaching 180 economies in 2025 to 2026.

“The World Bank Group is bringing back a fuller and sharper measure of the investment climate of countries, which is something that is badly needed in a global economy in the midst of a generalised slowdown,” says World Bank Group chief economist and development economics senior VP Indermit Gill.

“Governments that do more to make their economies business-ready will do better in reviving private investment, creating jobs, and quickening the transition to cleaner energy.”

The Business Ready project reflects a more balanced and transparent approach toward evaluating a country’s business and investment climate, and one that has been shaped by recommendations from experts from within and outside the World Bank Group, including governments, the private sector and civil society organisations.

“The Business Ready project represents a new approach to assessing the business and investment climates,” says World Bank indicators group director Norman Loayza. The World Bank indicators group leads the project.

“The approach aims to establish a better balance between the ease of conducting a business and the broader implications for society as a whole. It gives a more positive role for governments, advocating for better public services for businesses. In addition to experts’ assessments, it includes direct information from entrepreneurs and managers on their experience navigating the economy’s business environment,” he notes.