WASHINGTON, Nov 11 — The World Bank plans to unveil in about two years a replacement for its flagship “Doing Business” report on countries’ business climate, which was canceled after a data-rigging scandal, the bank’s chief economist, Carmen Reinhart, told Reuters.
“The underlying nuts and bolts will be in the public domain,” Reinhart said. “Public disclosure is an important pillar in restoring credibility.” The law firm WilmerHale is still working on a second report on possible staff misconduct about the data changes, which benefited China, Saudi Arabia and other countries.
“It’s important that the metrics of credibility are not personality-based, that they’re systems based,” she said, adding that the bank had instituted “a lot of safeguards” over the past year after reviewing several external reports. The resulting scathing 84-page review called for a series of remedial actions and reforms, citing a pattern of government efforts to interfere with the scoring.