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Sergey Levkin: Moscow continues to strengthen its position in World Bank Doing Business ranking

03.11.2016

One of the indicators of the rating is dedicated to dealing with construction permits.

This year, Russia stands out for positive reforms in the field of obtaining construction permits: number of procedures has decreased.

Saltane Valentina Member of the Doing Business team, World Bank

Recently the results of the World Bank’s “Doing Business” annual ranking were announced. Among other indicators the ranking evaluated the ease of obtaining permits for construction and quality control of buildings from project designing up to operation stage. In order to assess the position of Russia, the experts used the data on Moscow and St. Petersburg. Moreover, before voicing out the results, in early 2016 representatives of the World Bank have conducted a sample survey of experts on construction practices in these cities.

The Head of the Moscow Department of urban planning policy Sergey Levkin announced that our country has gained 115th position in terms of “Dealing with Construction Permits”, moving 4 points up as compared to the previous year. This was achieved due to reduction of terms for a number of procedures compulsory for developers. The result is that investors save their time and money reducing costs by 10%. For example, a developer who is building a warehouse in Moscow needs to pass through 14 procedures in 229.5 days, and the total cost of them will amount to 1.5% of the warehouse value.

Russia can improve its position in the World Bank's Doing Business ranking next year.

Polidy Tatiana Head of division “Real Estate Market” of the Fund of the Institute for Urban Economics

As in previous years, the city authorities intend to focus their efforts on optimization of procedures in construction industry, as well as on raising the level of transparency of the inspection order of newly constructed facilities on the stage of issuing dispositions on operation of buildings.

DIRECT SPEECH

Marat Khusnullin, Deputy Mayor for urban policy and construction of the city of Moscow:

We are satisfied with the fact that not only construction companies in Moscow, but also the foreign experts see the significant and systematic result of the work being done by the city authorities, which are aimed at improving the investment attractiveness of construction sector and reduction of the developer’s costs. Indeed, over the past five years we have managed to cancel redundant duplicative procedures in construction industry, as well as we have achieved the transparency of the procedures for their passage. We have focused on reforms aimed at facilitating for companies the collection of data necessary for elaboration of projects, as well as about the possibilities of connection to utility networks. I believe that these reforms have growth capacity for next year rating.

Vechernyaya Moskva