This interim assessment of the APEC’s Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) initiative during the year 2016 looks at the progress made by the APEC region in five priority areas: 1) Starting a Business; 2) Dealing with Construction Permits; 3) Getting Credit; 4) Trading Across Borders; and 5) Enforcing Contracts. This exercise, conducted as part of the Second EoDB Action Plan 2016-2018, also establishes the baseline values that will be used in evaluating APEC’s combined progress during this period.

By using the indicators of the World Bank’s Doing Business in these five priority areas, and their corresponding values in 2015 as baseline, this assessment examines whether APEC’s combined performance by 2017 is on track to meet the overall target of 10% improvement across priority areas for the first two years of this Second EoDB Action Plan. The examination of APEC’s average values in all priority areas’ indicators shows that APEC’s combined progress in 2016 was equal to 7.3%, exceeding the pro-rata target of 3.3%. The greatest progress was recorded in Getting Credit (18.1%), explained by an improvement in the strength of the legal rights and the depth of credit information in the APEC region.