10-day contract pays US$2000 under Competitiveness prog.

Apr 30, 2014 News

An Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)-funded project awarded last month will see a consultant being paid US$2,000 for 10 days of work. The contract is a consultancy project under the Support for Competitiveness Programme.
Katherine Marshall–Kissoon has been retained as a consultant for the review of the Doing Business Index (DBI) and to provide recommendations on its implementation.

Katherine Marshall–Kissoon

Under the background for the project, it notes that the overall targeted improvement in DBI ranking by 2015 is 35 places, from 115 to 80. It states that although this seems high, it is because Guyana’s current ranking of 115 does not reflect the ‘pure’ overall average of the rankings in each area for the DBI 2013, which would be 104. It indicates further that an improvement of 24 places – from 104 to 80 – should account for the inevitable changes taking place as a result of reform in other countries.
A ranking of 80 will put Guyana in the same league as other Caribbean economies – Trinidad (69), Jamaica (90), and the Caribbean region as a whole (96).
It states too that a ranking of 80 reflects Guyana’s steady GDP growth rate of 5 per cent, and will take into account many of the current reforms taking place in the business environment, including in the areas of: Trade Transactions, Competition and Consumer Affairs Policy, Corporate Governance, Taxation, Deeds Registry and Commercial Court reform.
The DBI is a composite index. Most of the indicators measure very specific things such as the number of procedures for starting a business or the cost to carry out an activity. The index is considered a good measure of the costs to businesses of taxes and regulations, administrative efficiency and the speed of Government dealings with business, and the legal and financial environment.
The Doing Business Index can offer domestic and foreign investors a useful snapshot of a Country’s institutional progress.