 We're going to have a conversation about the doing business report 2015 going beyond efficiency. I recommend, I don't know if we have copies of the report we do. I think as many of you know. Dan, thank you very much for your kind words. It's always a pleasure to be here at the center. What I'd like to do today is basically divide my remarks in two parts. I would like to tell you what is new in the doing business report with a particular focus on two or three areas. And then I would like to tell you a little bit about what's happening to the data. One of the advantages of doing this exercise on an annual basis is that by now we have 12 years of data for a very large number of countries, 189 to be precise, and we are able to. I'm going to ask my friends Paige and Sarah to join us up here. This sort of work that keeps me in the development business, I think that it's very inspiring the work and this new innovation of the distance to the frontier I think is particularly interesting. I'm going to ask my friend Paige Alexander to start. Just to share a little bit how USAID uses the doing business indicators, how you work with them because as I was saying earlier, I think they're sort of the mother of all policy dialogue discussion starters, but they're also important frames for sorts of roadmaps for the sorts of change that we want to see happen in the world. So Paige, thanks for being here. Thanks Tana. Thanks for the introduction and to CSIS for organizing the event. I'm privileged. Thanks very much. Let me ask you one question. So you travel to many countries in your region of all the countries. Can I safely assume they all know what the ranking is every year on the doing business indicators? Oh, absolutely. And I think that one of the problems, as I mentioned, playing to the test, one of the things AID did early on was to try to help a number of the countries increase their ranking because that was so important to them. And there's one country in particular back in the day in Georgia that really wanted to increase its ranking. So it played to the test and we were there to help them to get the books on, to get the laws on the books. The problem is the books then stay closed. And so actually it's taken time for us to realize how to not only have them recognize this is a test they need to play to, but these interventions need to stick. So they're all very well aware of it. Thank you. Sarah, you have a very interesting role on the board in terms of representing the US government to the World Bank and a little bit the World Bank to the US government. So there are a spectrum of views on the World Bank board about the doing business indicators. So talk a little bit about how the doing, you've been on the board now for several years. Talk a little bit about the doing business indicators and how you see them from the Treasury Department and how have the board dynamics evolved over time around the doing business indicators because they certainly elicit a spectrum of opinions. They do. Thank you. There was a series of shareholders who either didn't like how they ranked or how they ranked vis-a-vis their blood enemies over the mountains or this sort of a thing. But I also think there has also been an undercurrent, I can't prove it, of some staffers in the bank, I'll ask you this, not Augusto this, who have either at a professional jealousy or out of envy or out of philosophical disagreements have disliked doing business indicators all along. Have you seen a change in how bank staff, other than the bank staff that work on investment climate or in the research department, use or think about the doing business indicators? Because we just have a very interesting conversation about how PAGE and how AID teams and how embassies use it. It's not clear to me how much outside of the doing business universe and investment climate universe at the bank and some of the research people, it's been fully integrated because of, sometimes because of bureaucratic issues, but I also think some because of some, you know, when you have 4.5 million visits, I can't, you know, as a think tank, I have internet visit envy from Augusto for having so many. So I'm sure some of his colleagues in the bureaucracy are probably grumpy about that at some level. Well, I think, you know, you, it's used throughout, I mean you can't, I think that some invests with doing business. So the Augusto, I had a question for you, my, we have our friends from Australia here. So when I looked at the map of some of the areas for improvement, I think of Southeast Asia, I looked at some of the parts of Asia where they haven't moved as much. Australia could make a contribution if they were going to, would be to help move the improve on some of those investment climate issues in Asia. Could you just talk a little bit about why is it that some parts of Asia have been or are not as, you know, in the needs improvement department? Could you just make some broad comments about that? I think that Asia is the part of the world where you see the greatest variance in terms of the doing business indicators. You know, how your countries like Singapore and Malaysia and others who are near the top and then you have countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh and others who are way, way down. So I think this is a reflection of the continent itself, you know, whereas you have greater homogeneity, let's say in, you know, Eka region, Europe and Central Asia, or you have greater homogeneity in Latin America, Asia being a very vast continent, you know, with a great deal of variance and performance, you know, this is, this gets reflected in doing business data. Just, just a little bit, whether it's Vietnam or, or Cambodia. Oh, I have, I have a most encouraging story coming out of Asia. You know, there is this grouping called APEC, Asia Pacific Economic Corporation. The bank? How is the investment climate work funded at the bank? Do you all have trust funds that support your work? And could you use trust funds from bilateral donors like Australia or Japan who are in the audience to support your work? Frankly, the United States. The, the doing business team is embedded in a large. I'm going to call on some of my friends and colleagues as well. I, I want to make sure, I want to hear from my friend Thelma, ask if I know there's someone here in the audience who's a former ED from Chile who's on the board? Who's that? Who's that person? So I want to hear from that person as well. So I want to hear from Thelma. I want to hear from the former ED from Chile. And then if there's, and then I'll take one or other hand and we'll just, we'll gather a couple of, of questions or comments. Anybody else? And my friend, John Sullivan. So we're going to go with Thelma, the gentleman from Chile, and John Sullivan. So go ahead, Thelma. Thank you, Dan. I just wanted to preface my question with a, a, a statement. That is that I hope the doing business report kind of sticks to the objective criteria because I think that's why you are so successful. And you don't want to become a victim of your own success, where everyone wants you to take on an additional perhaps more subjective analysis in order to support their policy decisions or for whatever reason. But if part of the reason it's embraced so dramatically is that people can see that the numbers you are presenting don't lie, at least very much. So I would encourage you to stick to the objective criteria. And if you think you have criticism now, just wait until you move into this objective categories and you really will have criticism. That being said, how do you take into account from 05 to 13 changes in volume fluctuations? And then how is labor taken into account? Whether or not you have a labor force that you can draw on, you know, whether or not it's a domestic labor, the cost of importing labor, for example, would be quite high, I would think. But those three things, is that taken into account in the report? And just how would it be? This gentleman over here. We're a supporter of the doing business report. So I have a very particular view and at the board I supported it a lot. We have seen a big change in the last couple of years. I have a few questions. First, we were surprised that Chile is not leading the Latin American region in the last year. So can you explain a little bit on that, how the country that was ranked 34 the previous year now is 41 and behind Colombia, Peru and Mexico? Okay. What we can do? So we have a big challenge there. The other question. Hey, buddy. Thank you, Dan. John Sullivan with the Center for International Private Enterprise. First, a small editorial note. I was really pleased to see that you picked Peru as your example for a couple of reasons. One, it was Hernando de Soto that led the drive for property rights reform in Peru and the early doing business reports did give him credit for being one of the people that inspired your methodology. So I think that works together really nicely. I'm sure Paige was pleased since USAID was a big supporter of Hernando. It's nice to see that you actually had an impact, right? It's wonderful. My question though comes back to flipping over to the other side of the world. We're a big consumer and we utilize your materials a lot in our programs and projects in emerging markets and developing countries. And in the process of doing that, one of the things that we noticed was that in countries like Russia, there is what we came to call the implementation gap. There is a, we've actually even got a small advertisement, we have a publication on this on our website, Cype.org. But you actually see movements in the rankings that aren't reflected at the street level. An entrepreneur goes in in Sochi or somewhere else and says, look, I want to register my firm and they say, sorry, we're out of paperwork. We don't have the form. Can you come back tomorrow? Or in the Middle East they like. I'd like both Paige and Sarah to just comment on any of the comments or questions that were put on the table. So Gusto, go ahead and far away. Thank you very much. All of them very, very good questions. I will comment briefly. To the first question on doing business, remaining objective and narrowly focused. Yes, yes. I think that you are absolutely right. The strength of doing business is that it has maintained this narrow focus on business regulation. This is not to suggest that we are covering all the relevant areas of business regulation. And this addresses Sarah's point that could we do more while being very faithful to its ethos and still being focused on business regulation and obstacles to private sector development. Could we cover other areas that are crucial for the business environment? And the answer to that question is yes. We have a couple of, in fact, in the department there is a unit called the Special Initiatives Unit where we are incubating a number of different projects, including one or two other indicators of doing business. And my own sense is that if we get the funding, we are going to continue to do this. And in a medium term perspective, maybe the doing business report will continue to be narrowly focused on business regulation, but with a broader benchmark of indicators. Yes, the doing business data is hard data. I think it doesn't get harder than the doing business data. And I want to comment just on one of the reasons why, especially in smaller countries, as Sarah mentioned, whether it's a small Saharan African countries, Pacific islands, countries in Southeast Europe and other parts of the world, the data is so welcome. And that is because there is very often so little other data. You would be surprised in how many countries in the world. I could give you dozens of examples. The data on trade, the data on GDP, the data on poverty is very, very difficult to come by. And so when the doing business indicators come out, I think one of the reasons why governments are enthusiastic about it is a reference point. It is something that they can use to compare themselves to each other to look at what's happening in Singapore and New Zealand. I am so touched by the fact that more and more countries actually are no longer comparing themselves against their peers and their neighbors. They're actually looking at Singapore and New Zealand. New Zealand has a very active program of technical assistance on business start-up, you know, all over the world, many, many countries, because they are the gold standard for business start-up. And so I agree. I think that being able to deliver this data on a reliable basis, you know, every year is very, very important. It goes well beyond the impact of the indicators themselves. You asked current fluctuations, labor market, volume of trade. Yes, these things enter the other than labor. These things enter the analysis in an indirect way. Let me give you an example. For instance, let's suppose that for whatever reason a country is booming along and exports are picking up. Maybe the currency was devalued, export competitiveness increased, or maybe it's where they happen to be on the business cycle. And let's suppose that the much higher volumes of export in the short term could create bottlenecks at the port. And this could actually have an adverse impact on the time that it takes to process. What we find, of course, is that very often countries will respond to this by hiring new people for the custom service. But it could be the case that in the short term much higher volumes of trade, which put a burden on the existing system of control and cross-check at the border, could have an adverse impact on the indicators. Labor used to be part of the doing business framework, but in 2010 it was taken out. I think there were some issues of design with the indicator. It was criticized in many circles. And it remains a project that is undergoing a phase of research. The chief economist at the World Bank thinks that, and I happen to agree with him, that a set of indicators that are tracking different dimensions of the business environment, which does not have a labor component, perhaps is somewhat flawed in its focus. And so it remains the intention of the chief economist at the World Bank to take a look at this, but to perhaps come up with a more intelligent design than what we had in 2010. I think that much of the criticism, though by no means all much of the criticism that was made against the earlier indicator was justified. So that has been kind of a challenge that we have faced over the last several years. The issues of not wrecking the secret sauce, if you will, in terms of some of these additional things. Thelma, did you get your question answered? Okay, fine. I'd like to answer that too, because one of the reasons we find this so useful is because they are adjusting, it is making changes and adjusting to a series of issues we've seen on the ground. I would just say, I think you hit at the exactly the right question, which is that one of the key strengths is that it's objective, it's simple, it's comparable, comparable over time, comparable over space. And so you want to keep that while also... ...about the doing business indicators is I think it's the most powerful set of reforms and actions that the World Bank has done in the last 10 years. 2,000 reforms, over 2,000 reforms at this point, worldwide? Over 12 years, over 2,000 reforms. Tell me what other initiative that the World Bank or elsewhere has generated, that kind of change. We can do all the econometric analysis we want. We can do all the... We can make all the advocacy we want, but if we don't harvest both data and political will, we're not going to get change to happen. Doing business indicators is one of the rare examples of seeing that happen. So if I feel strongly about it, you bet. I absolutely do feel strongly about it because it's been one of the most successful things that the World Bank does. And the fact that there are folks, even in the face of data and evidence, seem to have a problem with that just strikes me as just bizarre. So it's really a privilege to host our friends at the World Bank as well as our friends at the U.S. government who, along with other governments like Australia, like Chile, like New Zealand, like the Nordic countries, have made sure... and small African countries, frankly, have made sure that this most important set of initiatives at the World Bank have remained in the face of, frankly, sometimes really stupid resistance from sometimes within the bureaucracy and sometimes a small number of vocal folks that have been against it. So keep it up. Augusto, we're with you. This is absolutely fantastic work and very inspiring. Please join me in thanking Augusto on the panel.