World
Bank reviews utility of its ‘Doing Business’ Report: Arun Maira,
Member, Planning Commission appointed on independent panel of experts
Mr.
Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group has announced the
appointment of an independent panel of experts to conduct a review of
the World Bank’s Doing Business report.
Mr. Arun Maira, Member of The Planning Commission, Govt. of India, has
been appointed as one of the ten international experts to this panel.
Mr. Trevor Manuel,Minister in charge of the National Planning Commission
of South Africa, would chair the panel. The
other members include experts from China, Brazil, Germany, UK, and
Korea.
Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, welcomed the appointment of Mr. Maira to this Panel to review this important report which has become a measure of a country's ability to compete and attract investments. Mr. Maira has led the preparation of the 12th Five Year Plan for Industry to accelerate the growth of the Manufacturing sector. The Doing Business report, now in its tenth year of publication, measures and analyzes regulations that apply to small and medium size local businesses in 185 economies. India (which ranks 132nd out of 185 countries in the 2013 edition of this report) needs to improve its regulatory framework to create a favourable business environment. This has been highlighted in the Twelfth Five Year Plan, and a systematic process for improving the effectiveness of business regulations, simultaneously reducing their burden on industry, has been designed and is being recommended to the States and to central ministries. NNK/MD
Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, welcomed the appointment of Mr. Maira to this Panel to review this important report which has become a measure of a country's ability to compete and attract investments. Mr. Maira has led the preparation of the 12th Five Year Plan for Industry to accelerate the growth of the Manufacturing sector. The Doing Business report, now in its tenth year of publication, measures and analyzes regulations that apply to small and medium size local businesses in 185 economies. India (which ranks 132nd out of 185 countries in the 2013 edition of this report) needs to improve its regulatory framework to create a favourable business environment. This has been highlighted in the Twelfth Five Year Plan, and a systematic process for improving the effectiveness of business regulations, simultaneously reducing their burden on industry, has been designed and is being recommended to the States and to central ministries. NNK/MD
PIB Press Release : Nov 8, 2012, Planning Commission
----------------------------
World Bank’s Anti-Labor Index Is a Dirty Business
The World Bank brags that its annual "Doing Business" report spurs countries to make "positive regulatory reforms."
But what the World Bank sees as "positive" is often anti-union and anti-worker.
It’s a 2012 campaign mantra: On Day One, the new president will reboot the economy by spurring businesses
to grow and thrive. Both mainstream candidates have vowed to achieve this, in part by eliminating onerous regulations to “unleash”
the long-suppressed power of American industry.
The story is surprisingly similar across the pond. The financial giants of Europe’s troikapummel Greece a
The World Bank has taken the extremely
dubious science of deregulation one step further by creating a guide, known as the Doing
Business report, that quantifies the regulatory “burden” that investors may
face in various countries. The 2013 report was released this week.
Echoing the corporate “job
creator” mythology of the Washington consensus, Doing
Business encourages financiers and governments to erode public-interest
protections, including safeguards for unions and workers. Labor groups
say the publication's warped
views on regulation and worker protections effectively gives a statistical justification
for leveraging economic aid or investment to pressure countries to privatize, deregulate and undermine unions.
Labor advocates are particularly critical of the section of the report that crystallizes these views, the
“Employing Workers Indicator” (EWI)
which purports to measure labor policy "as it affects the hiring and
redundancy
of workers and the rigidity of working hours." Despite the World Bank’s
past assurances that its analysis of labor regulations won't factor
into the main rankings on business friendliness, critics fear that these
data nonetheless filter into the report's evaluations,
and in turn imply labor laws essentially impede development.
The International
Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) criticizes the
2013 report’s implicit endorsement
of policies that slash benefits for laid-off workers, which praises
governments for “addressing one of the main factors deterring employers
from creating jobs in the formal sector.” Similarly, the
report chastises some countries in Africa for granting supposedly
over-generous severance-pay requirements for displaced workers, while
ignoring the fact that severance pay is especially vital for workers in
weaker economies because, in contrast to wealthier regions,
“state-provided unemployment benefits are practically
non-existent.”
From
an empirical standpoint, the labor analyses in the Employing Workers
section has historically invoked fuzzy math. Previous editions have
given high marks to governments notorious
for hostility to labor rights (what neoliberals call "flexibility"),
and criticized other countries, like Brazil and South Korea, for their
labor "rigidity," even though they had made significant progress in both
poverty reduction and economic development.
In recent years, ITUC argues, this skewed rational has been used to
support cutbacks on labor protections in Greece, Mozambique, Jordan and
other countries. In the current global economic crisis, we’re now
witnessing the chaotic consequences of earlier waves
of deregulation.
In 2009, under pressure from labor advocates such as the International Labour Organisation, the World Bank
shifted its stance and declared that
the index “should
not be used as a basis for policy advice or in any country program
documents that outline or evaluate the development strategy or
assistance program for a recipient country.”
Yet the anti-regulatory sentiment within Doing Business and the EWI continued to inform some policy discussions.
For example, according to ITUC's research,
Doing Business was cited in a 2010 IMF analysis of Romania,
which has been supported by IMF financing, to push the government “to
increase working time flexibility and to reduce hiring and firing
costs.”
Calling
the notion that labor standards drag down the economy a “totally
lopsided” framework, Peter Bakvis, director of ITUC’s Washington Office,
told Working In These Times: "To
have the World Bank’s highest circulation publication present this very
unilateral view, which is not based on evidence, that countries that do
away with labor regulations will get more investment and more growth,
is very harmful.” Rather than focusing on
further empowering corporations, he added, “The bank should be
encouraging countries to adopt policies that share growth as best as
possible, that protect workers who are threatened by job loss.”
It’s not just poor countries that are affected by these neoliberal economic assessments. The same morally
bankrupt cost-benefit analyses filter into U.S. politics in campaigns to strip away crucial protections such as collective
bargaining rights and anti-discrimination fair-pay laws.
Whether
regulation aims to ensure safety standards at workplaces or limit air
pollution or keep people from being arbitrarily fired, none of it is
viewed by Washington neoliberals as protection for the vulnerable, but
rather, as an assault
on free enterprise.
Of
course, neoliberal policies would continue steamrolling the poor with
or without the Doing Business indices,
but the World Bank’s arbitrary assessments lend a dangerous veneer of
objectivity to political attacks on working people and unions. This is
the arithmetic of unfettered business: Add capital, subtract rights, and
the 99% wind up with nothing.
Post a Comment