24/03/2020 - 16:05 7684

The international rating of the World Bank and the International Financial Corporation “Doing business”, assessing the ease of doing business in countries, the simplicity of their procedures, differ from other ratings. This rating covers the periodic cycle, which is the starting point of entrepreneurial activity - from the process of its registration to the closing of its business activities.

In this cycle, a business representative aims to construct the necessary object for his activity, connects to communication networks, sells his property, takes a loan for business development, pays taxes and faces several other processes. Besides, given the structure of this rating in the international scope, its results indicate the business environment created in the country for domestic and foreign investors.

In the “Doing Business” international rating, the results of 10 indicators are taken as the basis for determining the positions of countries. It is also planned to include “public procurement” in the number of indicators that will be evaluated starting from the annual report “Doing Business - 2021”.

In recent years, to create a favorable business environment in Uzbekistan, increase the country's attractiveness for foreign investors, a number of regulatory legal acts have been adopted, while unnecessary barriers and procedures that impede the free activity of entrepreneurs have been removed.

As a result, in the “Doing business” international rating, Uzbekistan has improved by 18 positions over the past five years. According to the results of the annual report “Doing business - 2020”, the ranking of Uzbekistan among 190 countries has risen from 76th to 69th rank and improved by 7 positions.

The main factors for increasing the rating of Uzbekistan in the latest annual report were recognized as improving indicators in the following areas:

1. The mandatory requirement for joint-stock companies to establish independent director members and the Audit Committee by law as well as the strengthening protection of minority shareholders' rights.
2. The mechanism to stimulate the use of mediation in enforcing contracts of the pre-trial dispute resolution mechanism, which is widely used in international practice, has been enshrined in law.
3. In the direction of international trade simplification, the risk management system for customs and border control has been fully launched, such as - “green corridor”, “yellow corridor”, “red corridor”.

However, despite achieved positive results, some indicators have drawbacks inconsistent implementation of reforms, including Dealing with construction permits, Getting credit, Paying taxes, Registering property, and resolving insolvency.

Therefore, to improve the effectiveness of the launched reforms, eliminate the drawbacks and problems, by Presidential Decree of the Republic of Uzbekistan dated November 20, 2019, #PP-4525 “On measures to further improve the business environment and enhance the system of supporting entrepreneurship in the country”, a number of measures have been identified to be implemented, in particular:

- establishing working groups in the central administrations of the responsible ministries and departments to bring the reforms to practitioners;

- abolishing the procedure of sending notifications by business entities to begin construction and installation works;

- compensating of expenses in the process of connecting electrical equipment with capacity up to 140 kilowatts to electric networks from the source of JSC “Regional Electric Networks”;

- canceling the requirement to verify the debt for utilities with notarization of contracts for the sale of real estate between business - legal entities at the request of one of the parties;

- putting into practice the system of returning within 60 days a part of the amount of value-added tax, taken into account in the taxation system, exceeding the amount of value-added tax calculated for the reporting period;

- registering in electronic form of permits and certificates required for the implementation of export-import operations through the customs information system “one window”.

Implementation of the above-mentioned measures in time will positively affect the results of the annual report of Uzbekistan “Doing Business - 2021”, and improve the conditions for doing business in the country and serve to strengthen the positive image in the international arena.