West African Economic and Monetary Union - The Doing Business 2012 report released Friday puts Mali ahead of the eight countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (also known by its French acronym, UEMOA for improving the business climate. Members of UEMOA are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. According to the report, Mali is the country where doing business is easiest. This country thus improves its business score for the fourth consecutive year. This year, the report acknowledged, Mali has made reforms to streamline the business environment in the field of entrepreneurship and obtaining loans.

In addition to creating a one-stop service, Mali has increased access to credit by transposing the amendments of the consistent with holding the security interest of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA), which expanded the range of assets that can be used as property.

The report said Mali's progress is due primarily to a genuine will of the government to improve the business environment as well as technical assistance provided by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), member of the World Bank.

This assistance consisted, among others, in assisting with the drafting or revision of procedures on decrees or detailed laws.

The proposed recommendations were mainly drawn from the World Bank group's experiences in similar countries or other regions.

PANA recalled that Doing Business analyses the regulations of an economy that impact businesses during their life cycle.

The aggregate rankings on the ease of doing business are calculated from 10 sets of indicators and cover 183 economies.

Pana 23/10/2011