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How to help poor countries help themselvesBY ALMOST any measure, foreign aid to the world's poorest countries remains much too low. But money is not the only, nor even always the best, way to help. An often-ignored fact is that poor countries frequently hurt themselves by strangling business with red tape. A splendid new report from the World Bank, “Doing Business in 2005”, provides a long list of such self-inflicted wounds in 145 countries (see article). It examines seven indicators of a country's business climate, from the cost of starting a new firm and enforcing contracts to the ease of hiring or firing workers and of borrowing money. The report is a mine of useful as well as disturbing information, and something of a handbook for how to put things right. It finds that poor countries impose on average three times the administrative costs and twice the number of bureaucratic procedures as rich countries. For example, registering property requires one step in Norway, but 16 in Algeria. Incorporating a business takes two days in Canada, but 153 in Mozambique. Sacking a worker in Guatemala costs a firm three years' worth of wages, compared with almost nothing in New Zealand. Altogether, such things are a heavy economic burden on poor nations. Of course, not all regulation destroys wealth. Protecting property rights requires plenty of government action, such as granting titles, creating fair courts, and enforcing contracts and debts as well as environmental regulations. But poor countries often lack these. Reform means scrapping bad laws and creating better institutions. Some poorer countries, such as Slovakia and Colombia, have made much progress over the past year, but most others still have a long way to go. Many of the problems in poor countries are the legacy of European colonists' laws and bureaucracy, designed to control a local population, not to encourage growth. Last year, the first issue of “Doing Business” noted that countries with legal codes derived from France were among those with the most red tape. On top of these have grown further native encrustations. Thus Latin America today suffers not only from the Napoleonic code and layers of Iberian bureaucracy, but also from practices introduced by heavy-handed modern governments. Jettisoning this ballast even while preserving regulations that are fundamental to economic growth will require good judgment. A to-do list for growthThe first step is to put aside ideology, from the left or the right. Development aid is beset by arguments over whether improving the business climate or reducing poverty should be the priority. In most cases, that debate is phoney: the two goals are the same. Labour-market reform creates more jobs for the excluded, typically women and the young. Improving property rights makes businesses more willing to invest. For example, aid money from Sweden, Denmark and Norway, all with solid social safety nets at home, has been well-targeted at ostensibly business-friendly reforms, such as improving property registers and training judges for commercial courts in Africa. Another lesson is that the order of reforms can matter. Granting land titles to holders of informal plots has had some success in Peru. But if labour and banking laws have not been improved, titles will not make it much easier to run a business. It may be best to start with the hardest steps, as Colombia has done with its labour market, and then tackle simpler ones. Being part of a larger economic grouping, such as the European Union or a free-trade area, can help.Making more foreign aid conditional on specific and verifiable regulatory reforms would also help, and examples of aid that has been used in such ways have already produced encouraging results. Development banks have taken a beating in recent years for pushing budget cuts and privatisations on borrowers. But the reforms outlined in “Doing Business” should be far less controversial, and might even prove popular. Can anyone really argue, for example, that requiring a minister to approve land registrations, as in Malawi, helps the poor? The Economist, 9/11/04