In September 2008 the World Bank published their Doing Business 2009 survey results, showing the Republic of Tajikistan at 159th place among 181 countries surveyed—a drop of 3 places from the previous year.

At the same time, positive results were achieved with regard to some survey indicators. For the Protecting Investors indicator RT’s country ranking improved by 29 positions to 150th place, and the Closing a Business indicator improved 5 positions to 97th place. The most successful results for the country were achieved in the Enforcing Contracts and Registering Property indicators, which took 23th and 46th places, respectively, out of the 181 surveyed countries. Other Doing Business indicators show significant room for improvements, as RT took 168th place for the Starting a Business indicator, and 178th place for Dealing with Construction Permits, and 172th and 159th places for the Getting Credit and Paying Taxes indicators, respectively.

BEI Project works closely with state bodies, international organizations, the World Bank Doing Business Project team, and private sector representatives to improve the Republic of Tajikistan’s country rankings and create a favorable environment for business and foreign investments.

A License is a special permit issued by a licensing body to carry out a certain type of activity subject to mandatory requirements and conditions. Licensing procedures are always accompanied by administrative barriers that complicate the process of obtaining licenses for businessmen. These procedures are sometimes described differently between laws governing them, leading to additional confusion and barriers when entrepreneurs seek the license or when the licensing bodies attempt to implement requirements. The solution to this problem is harmonization of licensing legislation.

Toward the goal of harmonization the BEI Project works with relevant government bodies to amend 32 laws of the Republic of Tajikistan in terms of their compliance with the Law “On Licensing of Certain Types of Activity.” To date the Government of RT has made amendments to the Regulation on Licensing of Certain Types of Activity with a view to streamline licensing procedures, simplify licensing requirements and conditions of certain types of activity, and reduce the number of documents required to obtain licenses. With BEI’s assistance work on harmonizing inter-agency bylaws was completed. All illegal acts were declared inactive, amendments were made to acts that contradict licensing legislation, and acts that were not registered were subject to registration in the RT Ministry of Justice.

BEI plans further work harmonizing Government bylaws with the Law and Regulation on Licensing.

The BEI Project since 2007 cooperates with the RT Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, and the Executive Body of Sughd Oblast for the process of establishing Free Economic Zones (FEZs) within the Republic of Tajikistan, and in Sughd Oblast in particular. With BEI support a legal, financial and economic analysis was completed, and supporting TV programs prepared that on the establishment of the FEZs in the Republic of Tajikistan. BEI also assisted in preparing the Regulation on FEZ Sughd, Draft Charter of FEZ Sughd Administration, and amendments to the RT Law on Free Economic Zones, which were all approved by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.