Article source
Reuters
Article date
Sun, Jun 23, 2013
An independent panel set up by the World Bank to look at the validity of one of its highest profile country rankings said on Monday the Bank should stop producing it because it may be misleading.
The Bank's annual 'Doing Business' report judges 185 countries on 10 criteria and compiles an index on the ease of doing business, assigning each country a rank. The rankings can carry huge weight with governments.
But a panel initiated by the Bank's new president, Jim Yong Kim, found that the rankings could too easily be affected by small factors and were sometimes not objective.
"The panel believes the Bank should make a clean break with this practice," it said in a report. The panel was headed by South Africa's planning minister Trevor Manuel.