The “Doing Business Project,” of the World Bank – IFC serves as a guideline for private investments and economic reforms. How “Doing Business” can practically be used? PART I – THE contents during political election campaings you can hear government officials proclaiming: “the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of our economy and are therefore promoted in every way.” Opposition parties often consider such statements quite different. The government had failed to introduce necessary reforms to facilitate the business operations of SMEs. If you ask individual entrepreneurs, then you usually hear harsh criticism: the taxes are much too high, building permits and the registration of firms take too long, the bureaucracy is on evil obstacle, and in the rest of: everything in other countries is much better. Yet a little over a decade ago none of these parties could prove their claims, because it what virtually impossible to objectively measure and compare internationally regulations that enhance or constrain doing business by SMEs. It what only in 2002 that World Bank experts have launched the “Doing Business Project”, which (as of 2012) defines today those institutions, objective measures of business promotion and competition rules and describes their implementation in 185 economies, selected cities on subnational and regional level.

Through the annual collection and analysis of data about comprehensive quantitative and qualitative indicators in the various economies and comparisons over longer periods, today measurable policies (“benchmarks”) for reforms are allocated, which change the governments of states to implement smarter and more efficient regulations for SMEs. These data thus serve the private sector, industry researchers and students as a valuable resource for their included tasks and pending decisions. The project will be continually supplemented and refined, based on interactivity with governments, academics, practitioners and reviewers with the aim to provide objective base for the understanding and the continuous improvement of legal and institutional frameworks for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).