MOSCOW, October 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Russia has moved up 11 places from the last year in World Bank's Ease of Doing Business 2016, going from 62^nd to 51^st place.

The largest contribution to this result was made by new reforms, the implementation of the Roadmaps of the National Business Initiative and partial changes in the methodology of the rating, because of which Russia's last year's position has also been changed from 62^nd place to 54^th.

Out of the 189 countries included in the rating, Russia has made it into the top 5 countries for the number of implemented reforms.

Russia demonstrated the best performance among the BRICS countries getting 5^th place in Enforcing Contracts and 8^th place in Property Registration.

Russia moved up the most in Getting Electricity (from 143 to 29^th place) thanks to the introduction of two new indexes: reliability of supply and transparency of tariffs. Another important factor that helped Russia move up in this rating was the improvements that occurred in Saint-Petersburg this year, allowing it to catch up with Moscow in terms of simplicity of procedures to obtain electricity connection.

The main factors that helped Russia move up in Dealing with Construction Permits (from 156 to 119 place) was the introduction of the new building quality control index where Russia got 14 points out of a possible 15.

Andrey Nikitin, Director of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, stresses that there is still plenty of potential for Russia to move further up in Doing Business but it is important to have a close look at the negative factors that are reducing the effect from removal of administrative barriers.

'We've gone down in customs and by quite a bit, but the project group responsible for that Roadmap notes that customs authorities are doing a lot to reduce administrative barriers and we need to study why we moved down so many places in the customs rating,' Andrey Nikitin was quoted as saying.

SOURCE Agency for Strategic Initiatives