Facilitating Ease of Doing Business Chapter 5: Facilitating Ease of Doing Business One of the key factors in influencing the effective functioning of markets, especially of fast­moving consumer goods, is that firms operating on the supply side and consumers on the demand side face low transaction costs. The World Bank has tried to establish a relationship between the magnitude of the cost of these transactions with measures of ease of doing business. A comprehensive Easy of Doing Business Index has been developed for 190 countries. There are other factors also that have affected the operations of markets and production processes in the Pakistani setting. They are identified in this Chapter. 5.1. Pakistan’s Ranking in the Ease of Doing Business Index The country rankings for 2020 have been released along with rankings in specific transactions. Pakistan’s rankings in 2015 and 2020 respectively are shown in Table 5.1. Table 5.1: Pakistan’s Ranking in Ease of Doing Business Index Pakistan 2015 Pakistan 2020 Overall 128 108 Dealing with Construction Permits 125 112 Enforcing Contracts 161 156 Getting Credit 131 119 Getting Electricity 146 123 Paying Taxes 172 161 Protecting Minority Investors 21 28 Registering Property 114 151 Resolving Insolvency 28 58 Starting a Business 116 72 Trading Across Borders 108 111 India 2020 63 27 163 25 22 115 13 154 52 136 68 Bangladesh 2020 168 135 189 119 176 151 72 184 154 131 176 The good news is that Pakistan has significantly improved its ranking from 128th in 2015 to 108th in 2020. Now Pakistan is ahead of Bangladesh with a low ranking of 168th, but behind India, which is 63rd out of the 190 countries. 43