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- 10/01/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the Ceremony Marking the Full Operational Capacity of Africa Command (AFRICOM)
- 09/17/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the "Doing Business: Five Years of Reform" Event- "Building Business, Restoring Relationships"
- 08/21/08: Press Briefing with Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance via telephone from Tbilisi, Georgia - "Humanitarian Assistance to Georgia"
- 07/24/08: Remarks by President George W. Bush on The Freedom Agenda
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Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore
Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and Administrator, USAID
Building Business, Restoring Relationships
"Doing Business: Five Years of Reform" Event
The Rotunda Room, Ronald Reagan Building
Washington, D.C.
September 17, 2008
Introduction
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great pleasure to join my colleagues from the World Bank to celebrate reforms once again as we present the 6th annual Doing Business 2009: Five Years of Reform. It covers 10 areas of business regulation in 181 economies. And it covers them in a way that inspires reform. The United States Agency for International Development has been a strong supporter of this project from the outset, and we will continue to be.
In these past five years, Doing Business has produced a goldmine of accomplishments. There is the groundbreaking work on the impact of business regulations on women, we addressed last year. This year, USAID has set aside one million dollars to advance understanding in this area through our Office of Women in Development and the Economic Growth Office. I look forward to sharing the results of this new initiative, but I'll save that for now.
There is also a wealth of new reformers to applaud. I am proud to report that eight of this year's Top Ten are new to the Reformers Club. I also am pleased to see Egypt and Colombia back on the list for another round of accolades. The competition has definitely heated up.
Sub-Saharan Africa has made an impressive showing this year, with three countries in the Reformers Club for the first time: Senegal, Burkina Faso and Botswana. Close behind them were five other African countries making at least three significant business environment reforms. It looks like the world's regulators have caught the Olympic Fever of reform. But instead of gold medals, the reformers - and their citizens - win a better business environment.
Five years of reforms. This is no small accomplishment. In fact, nearly 1,000 business environment reforms have been implemented since the publication of DoingBusiness 2003. Now I would like to share some thoughts about another area this project has brought into focus - the subject of partnerships in business environment reforms.
The Power of Partnerships
Fifteen years ago, USAID and the World Bank Group partnered to develop the Investor Roadmap Survey. Inspired by Hernando de Soto's groundbreaking work on informality, we developed a system that helped us identify problems faced by investors. In the midst of the studies, forms and analysis, Simeon Djankov and his team honed in on a simple, transparent set of indicators for understanding the business environment. Those indicators would ignite a worldwide movement of business environment reform.
Doing Business has become one of our favorite tools for building partnerships. USAID continues to team with the World Bank Group to assist reform efforts inspired by this project. Over the past three years, we have supported a growing number of sub-national Doing Business surveys, studies that compare cities in a country or region, inspiring competition for reform at the municipal level. Colombia has used their sub-national survey to create competition for reform throughout the country. And Colombia is once again a Top Ten Reformer.
USAID has also worked closely with the Doing Business team to address reform priorities on the ground in developing countries. In March of this year, Simeon presented an analysis of Doing Business constraints to the government of the Kyrgyz (Keer gheez) Republic. Kyrgyz officials immediately asked for assistance from USAID's Business Environment Improvement Project to present the World Bank's findings to a wider group of government officials and begin reforming regulations. With only three months to work before the Doing Business team stopped measuring progress for 2008, the Kyrgyz government declared "100 Days of Reform" - an ambitious program of administrative change and regulatory simplification.
USAID collaborated closely with World Bank and provided extensive support. The result: the Kyrgyz Republic jumped from 99 to 68 in the Doing Business rankings, landing third among the Top Ten Reformers.
USAID also has used Doing Business as a platform for partnership with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Earlier this year, I had the privilege of visiting Albania, where USAID administers the MCC Threshhold Program. This program has revamped business registration, tax administration, and public procurement through innovative e-government solutions. I attended the inauguration of the National Agency for an Information Society, handing over the new e-governance systems from our MCC project to the Agency. Today, I am pleased to note that Albania has moved from 135 to 86, and is the second strongest reformer of 2008.
We value these partnerships very highly.
Yet perhaps the most important partnership for USAID is with host governments who have requested USAID's assistance in removing regulatory constraints. Around the world, we have taken common cause to improve the business environment with partner governments who need technical help to improve business regulation. For example, we have used the Doing Business reform mandate in Senegal to focus our long-standing strategic partnership with the Wade (Wahd) government on business registration. During a visit to Dakar this year, I had the pleasure of seeing firsthand the impact of those reforms at Senegal's Investment Promotion Agency, where a one-stop shop has eliminated 50 days of delay in business registration. This was just one of many reforms that propelled Senegal into the Top Ten Reformers, and the top reformer in Africa.
Continuing Commitment
USAID is committed to the Doing Business project. You have already heard how it has enriched our partnerships with the World Bank, MCC, and governments around the world. But it has also enriched our own analysis and assistance.
Two years ago, our Economic Growth Office identified a shift in the kinds of assistance requested by partner governments. Because of the Doing Business reports, countries were increasingly requesting help with business environment reforms. Doing Business identifies areas where reforms are needed, and it tell us what needs to be done. So we modified USAID's well established commercial law analysis program to create deeper understanding of systemic problems reflected by each Doing Business. In the past year, we sent field teams to Pakistan, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda to study business barriers and provide reformers with extensive recommendations for change. The recommendations have resulted in new projects, projects that will help these countries improve the business environment so that more jobs can be created and more people can move out of poverty.
Thanks to Doing Business, we are creating new tools for understanding business and investment barriers. As I mentioned earlier, this year we will develop tools for identifying the impact of business climate reforms on women, to ensure that women are able to fully participate in the benefits of reform.
We have also just launched a new analysis of the business enabling environment for agriculture. This new tool, "Doing Agribusiness", will allow us to implement our Economic Growth Strategy more effectively, addressing systemic problems that result in unnecessary food shortages and rural impoverishment.
We will soon test our Doing-Business-based analysis on value chains within a country, value chains that often suffer from inappropriate regulation. We expect that this approach will help us and our partners to better identify and reduce the roadblocks to growth.
And we are working closely with one of our implementing partners to develop a Doing-Business-based analysis of the environment for health and healthcare. All too often, efforts to improve distribution of life-saving drugs or extend medical care to vulnerable populations are thwarted by inefficiency and even corruption in the health business. In the coming year, we hope to address the business of health through a modified Doing Business lens.
The results from all of these efforts are being captured and shared through our Global Development Commons. The Global Development Commons represents our commitment to the global development community. It is a place where we can make best practices and lessons learned freely available so that we can learn from each other's work.
Restoring Relationships
It would be easy to extol the importance of the Doing Business Project just by pointing out the hundreds of reforms achieved this past year alone. We could discuss the myriad articles and academic papers written on Doing Business topics, or highlight the importance of business reform to economic growth, and how these reforms are leading to growth that reduces poverty and increases opportunitues for the poor.
But today I would like to point out perhaps the greatest impact that Doing Business has achieved. And it is something seldom mentioned.
The Doing Business project is restoring vital relationships. Poverty is a problem in itself, but it is also a symptom. It is a symptom of broken relationships. Relationships between government and governed. And while it may be possible for a government to improve regulations on its own, success has always been greater when the reforms come out of dialogue between the government and the private sector, between management and labor, between business and consumers.
Business regulations do not regulate business, they regulate human relationships. Economic and social relationships. Relationships among men and women, poor and rich, outsiders and insiders. And it is in the context of those relationships that business succeeds or fails.
Let me give you an example. Today, the top reformer for 2008 is Azerbaijan, which reformed in seven of the ten indicator areas and moved from 97th to 33rd in the rankings. At the heart of these successful reforms was dialogue. Public private dialogue. Dialogue in which government and business listened to each other, worked together, and achieved exceptional success.
Azerbaijan is not alone. Today in Rwanda, government ministries are required to obtain feedback from the private sector before they implement changes in regulations. Rwanda climbed nine places in this year's rankings.
In Macedonia, public agencies regularly initiate policy dialogue with business groups. Macedonia moved up 8 places this year.
Throughout the world, you can now find councils, working groups, and task forces comprised of business, government, and civil society, working together for better regulation. More simply put, you can find hope.
Doors that were once closed, doors that shut out women, minorities, civil society, are opening. Faced with the public record of their strengths and weaknesses, governments are looking closely at the Doing Business rankings, then asking business how to make things better. Business thrives in open, transparent, and responsive systems, and Doing Business has opened an invaluable door for reform. A few governments have not yet used that door, but they are exceptions, and even the exceptions are fewer and fewer.
Reform is good business.
Conclusion
There is still much work to do for the world to succeed at lifting billions out of poverty and restoring stability and peace. Doing Business may not do it all. But, when I look at what this project has accomplished so far in five short years, I am very excited about the prospects for future.
Thank you.
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