THE global economic situation is depressing and even a bit scary. News reports just present fragments of information on the financial catastrophe and its implications. It’s difficult to make sense of the economic mess without a full picture of the problem. A good resource to bring some clarity to the issues is the World Bank Group’s report “Global Economic Prospects 2009” (www.worldbank.org/gep2009).
The up-to-date information provided by the World Bank Group (WBG) can be illuminating. WBG (www.worldbank.org) is a family of five international organizations responsible for providing finance and advice to countries for the purposes of economic development and eliminating poverty. Its five agencies are: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Saudi Arabia is a member of all five agencies.
Numerous initiatives within WBG collect data on member countries and transform those facts and figures into information. For example, the Political Risk Insurance Center (PRI-Center) is an information portal website providing free access to online political risk management and insurance resources. The PRI-Center was established in 2006 as part of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency’s (MIGA) mandate to promote foreign direct investment to developing countries, in order to enhance growth and development.
A country analysis of Saudi Arabia from the PRI-Center focuses on risk management information. This includes a country snapshot, research and tools, risk analyses of the Kingdom, legal guides and regional reports. The information is collected from credible sources in one convenient online destination — www.pri-center.com/country/country_specific.cfm?pgid=2&countrynum=167. In addition to PRI-Center, MIGA also operates FDI.net — a portal site providing free access to Foreign Direct Investment information resources.
WBG through IFC also sponsors the Doing Business project. This project provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 181 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. Doing Business furnishes a quantitative measure of regulations for starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business — as they apply to domestic small and medium-size enterprises. View the information about Saudi Arabia at www.doingbusiness.org/ExploreEconomies/?economyid=163.
If reading reports and trying to make sense of charts is tiresome, then it’s time to take a graphical trip around the world using WBG’s Business Planet to discover how easy or difficult it is to do business in 181 economies. Business Planet actually takes the information from the Doing Business project and presents it as a mapping interface program, featuring more than 20 maps on different topics. The maps use a basic color-coded system to classify countries' business climates. Click on the color markers to learn more about each economy. Give it a try at http://rru.worldbank.org/businessplanet/.