Egypt moves down in World Bank’s 2016 Ease of Doing Business List
Egypt’s Ease of Doing Business ranking dropped to the 131st position out of 189 countries surveyed on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index for 2016.
In 2015, Egypt ranked 126th in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index.
Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from 1–189. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. The rankings are determined by sorting the aggregate distance to frontier scores on 10 topics, each consisting of several indicators, giving equal weight to each topic. The rankings for all economies are benchmarked to June 2015.
In a call with reporters ahead of the report’s release, Augusto Lopez-Claros, director of the bank’s Global Indicators Group, warned against over-interpreting the results and admitted they did not always reflect macroeconomic realities.
“It is not inconceivable for a country to do relatively well on the Doing Business indicators and at the same time not do so well in terms of economic growth in the near term,” he said.
Among the examples of that, he said, was Iceland, which after the 2008 crisis saw its economy collapse and yet continued to rank highly as a place to do business by the World Bank’s measures.
