15 Europe (CEEC-8) and Romania that, together with Bulgaria, are on the EU accession path as well as ten CIS economies (no data are available for Tajikistan and Turkmenistan). The diagnostic tool is the World Bank’s _Cost of Doing Business_ comparative survey (World Bank 2005a). The compiled data shed lights on tangible components shaping the legal cost of conducting business in Bulgaria in comparative perspective. We look into seven areas covered by the survey: starting business, labor market flexibility, registering property, contract enforcement, bankruptcy, and protection of investors.

As a first step, we assess the overall formal regulatory ease of doing business relative to transition countries. Data tabulated in Table 7 contains information on overall ranking in terms of ease of doing business overall and in each area. It was derived as follows: Each area has between one (protection of investors—disclosure measure) and five different indicators (access to credit and labor market flexibility). Except for contract enforcement (four indicators), three indicators describe the state of regulatory practices in other areas. Since rigidity of employment indicator is an average of three other indicators, we take into account the average indicator together with firing cost. We normalize each indicator taking best practice among CIS/CEEC states as 100. We calculate the average for each of seven areas covered by ‘doing business’ survey. The average across areas gives an indication of the overall ease/difficulty of doing business in a country as juxtaposed against the best conceivable regulatory regime, that is consisting of most businessfriendly arrangements in the region. The higher values ranging between maximum of 100 (best) and 0 (worst) indicate a better relative performance.

**Table 7** : _Ranking of CIS/CEEC states in terms of overall ‘formal’ ease of doing business in 2004_

||Starting<br>business|Flexibility of<br>employment|Registering<br>property|Enforcing<br>contracts|Closing<br>business|Protecting<br>investors|Getting<br>credit|Ease of<br>doing<br>business|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Lithuania|58|37|74|86|68|100|40|66|
|Latvia|48|30|15|77|100|83|70|61|
|Slovak Republic|39|100|27|49|31|100|54|57|
|Czech Republic|33|56|28|72|18|100|89|57|
|Estonia|40|37|40|83|45|67|63|53|
|Armenia|47|64|_38_|65|68|50|_37_|53|
|Georgia|39|51|18|54|53|83|56|50|
|Poland|32|49|19|51|60|67|57|48|
|Russia|43|69|21|62|77|50|13|48|
|Hungary|34|38|27|76|36|83|40|48|
|Kazakhstan|41|69|18|60|24|83|23|45|
|Kyrgyz Republic|70|54|22|28|53|50|31|44|
|**Bulgaria**|**35**|**46**|**19**|**48**|**41**|**33**|**69**|**42**|
|Moldova|33|50|26|51|41|50|36|41|
|Uzbekistan|33|39|10|45|47|67|39|40|
|Romania|79|17|17|51|27|33|53|39|
|Belarus|18|50|48|54|44|17|44|39|
|Azerbaijan|44|33|29|56|43|33|24|38|
|Slovenia|28|28|20|45|27|67|48|38|
|Ukraine|27|17|14|65|32|50|28|33|
|Memorandum: Bes|t CIS/CEEC|performance in|percent of the|best practice|||||
|worldwide|52|0|10|77|58|86|54|48|

Source: data from _Doing Business in 2005. Removing Obstacles to Growth_ . The World Bank and Oxford University Press, Washington DC, 2005.

Although at a first glance, these may not seem to be very demanding benchmarks in particular for flexibility of employment and registering property where the best CEEC/CIS-wide practice diverges widely from the best practice worldwide (last line in Table 7), this is not the case. Consider that Lithuania and Slovakia were among top 20 economies in the world ranked on the overall ease of doing business in 2004 (World Bank 2005a, p. 2).

The ranking appears to defy expectations of the edge that CEEC-10 should have over CIS economies thanks to EU accession path. Although top five positions do not come as surprise, rankings of other countries