• reducing entry barriers and operating costs for businesses;
• improving transparency in the development and application of laws and regulations;
• simplifying business formalities through a range of strategies widely tested in other countries;
• building corporate governance, competition, and other legislative frameworks; and
• reinforcing the rule of law for market operations.

• We carried out a broad review of private sector development in Serbia focusing on improving the over-all regulatory environment for private enterprises and simplification of business formalities. Our report, "IMPROVING THE REGULATORY AND ADMINISTRATIVE ENVIRONMENT FOR PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT IN SERBIA" can be downloaded here.
• The report concluded with an action plan affecting institutions, policies, and procedures. These reforms, widely tested in other countries, will move Serbia toward international norms of rule-based governance and reduce opportunities for corruption in administrative decisions, one of the current government's top priorities. The actions are designed both to produce short-term, visible benefits meeting the immediate needs of businesses and citizens, and to build new capacities that will have medium-to-longer-term benefits for Serbian development.
• We act in a variety of advisory capacities on SME reforms. We provide a continuing stream of day-to-day advice on draft laws and policies.
• We helped organize three international workshops on reform issues for a wide range of government, judicial, and private sector officials in Serbia. The workshops were on regulatory reform, business registration, and company law. These workshops helped generate support for reforms and deepened understanding of the requirements of a functioning market economy and concrete options available to the Serbian Republic.

Business Registration Reforms by Jacobs and Associates

March 2005

Jacobs and Associates is a global consulting firm specializing in regulatory reform and better business environments. Jacobs and Associates, based in the United States , Ireland , and Korea , provides a wide range of regulatory reform services around the world. We have worked in more than 60 countries. Our website at www.regulatoryreform.com contains detailed information on our services and our free reports and publications.

Jacobs and Associates offers a full range of services to modernize business registration systems and institutions in developing countries:

• Diagnosis of strengths and weaknesses in existing business registries, comparison with international benchmarks of performance, assessment of the role of business registration in the corporate governance regime, use of the registry to prevent criminality;
• Development of recommended solutions and design of solutions to fit national legal circumstances and institutional opportunities, while converging with international good practices,
• Institutional reform to adapt existing institutions or create new institutions to house the registry,
• Implementation services, including development of system specifications, software design and preparation, and support for procurement procedures.

In 2002-2005, we worked on business registries in Eastern Europe and Africa :

• Business Registration Reform in Serbia . With the support of the World Bank, we designed the new registry of the Republic of Serbia , the most advanced registry in the Balkans, which began operation in January 2005. Mr. Jacobs worked with the Serbian team from 2002-2004 in drafting the initial proposal, as well as the strategy, financial plan, and implementation plan. The new registry reduces the time needed for company registration from 31 days to 10 days in 2005, and to 5 days by 2007, while vastly increasing market transparency and ease of access to information. Unlike other reforms in the region, this reform moved registration from the commercial courts to an independent administrative body, and created a unified electronic registry.

• Business Registration Reform in Bulgaria . Mr. Jacobs is heading the Jacobs and Associates project to modernize the business registry in Bulgaria . With the support of USAID, we are working with the Government of Bulgaria on a radical reform of the business registry. Consensus has been reached in Bulgaria that reform is desirable. The three key decisions now facing Bulgaria are: 1) the role of business registration in the new corporate governance regime; 2) the services that business registration should offer in a competitive market economy; and 3) the most appropriate organization and institutions to fulfill that role and offer those services. We wrote the first analysis to systematically assess in Bulgaria the benefits and costs of various alternatives for reforming business registration. Recent documents: Reform of Bulgaria 's Business Registration System: Draft Implementation Plan with Workload, Staffing, Budget, and Revenues Estimates (Feb 2005), Modernizing business registration in Bulgaria : Options for change (July 2004)

• Business Registration Reform in Lesotho . Jacobs and Associates prepared, for FIAS, a diagnostic and action plan for business registration reform that would transfer the Companies Registry to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Marketing, where it should be developed as an information resource for the benefit of the business community (local and foreign) and other parts of government. Recommendations in the report included the extension of the Registry's functions to embrace the registration of business names and rationalization of procedures. Overall, these reforms should result in improved transparency, elimination of duplicated effort, better services to business and more reliable information for government. (June 2004)

Contact Scott Jacobs at scottjacobs@regulatoryreform.com or 1 202 415 4525 with any questions.