World Bank holds Ease Doing Business report over data irregularities

The World Bank on Thursday (local time) said the publication of the Doing Business report will be paused as it probes data collection irregularities in the annual report.

In a statement, World Bank said over the 17 years of its existence, the Doing Business report has been a valued tool for countries seeking to measure costs of doing business.

"A number of irregularities have been reported regarding changes to the data in the Doing Business 2018 and Doing Business 2020 reports, published in October 2017 and 2019. The changes in the data were inconsistent with the Doing Business methodology," World Bank said in its statement.

The World Bank said it is conducting a systematic review and assessment of data changes that occurred subsequent to the institutional data review process for the last five Doing Business reports.

"We have asked the World Bank Group's independent Internal Audit function to perform an audit of the processes for data collection and review for Doing Business and the controls to safeguard data integrity," it said.

The Bank stated it will act based on the findings and will retrospectively correct the data of countries that were most affected by the irregularities.

"The Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank has been briefed on the situation as have the authorities of the countries that were most affected by the data irregularities. The publication of the Doing Business report will be paused as we conduct our assessment," said the World Bank.

India had jumped 14 positions to be ranked 63rd among 190 countries in the World Bank's ease of doing business 2020 survey.