Faisal Naru—a senior consultant in DAI’s Economics, Business, and Finance Group—recently returned from addressing the "Regional Capacity Building Seminar on Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA)," held on November 20 in Istanbul, Turkey, as part of the Good Governance for Development in Arab Countries Initiative. Attended by some 60 participants, this Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-sponsored event was just the latest in a series of conferences and seminars that speak to a growing interest in better regulation and enabling environment issues.

"The better regulation and regulatory reform agenda is a fast-moving and evolving one in which new methods and techniques are being implemented all the time," said Naru, "so there are relatively few proven implementers of the most current better regulation practices. In general, however, advocates of better regulation recognize that the aim is ‘good regulation’—as distinct from the ‘deregulation’ agenda that tends to see regulation as inherently bad. Implementing better regulation initiatives requires practitioners to deal with the political economy as well as the economy of a given country, which accordingly demands a broad set of skills, competencies, and knowledge."

In highly developed economies, where growth opportunities are comparatively limited, better regulation and regulatory reform focuses on refining the business environment to enable the highest possible levels of private sector productivity and growth, said Naru, with "the Dutch and British now seen as world leaders in this area."

But increasingly, he said, transition and developing countries are now seen as possible beneficiaries of such enabling environment reform. In transitional economies, there is a recognition that improving the regulatory framework will assist both economic growth and good governance—the European Union, for example, requires new-entry states to subscribe to a regulatory management system such as RIA. In developing countries, said Naru, "donors have latched on to the benefits that developed and transitional economies have found, and they are seeking to implement similar reforms through their assistance to countries with even more limited resources and capacity."

Hence the recent flurry of events focused on this topic. In the past few months alone, DAI’s better regulation practitioners have attended and/or addressed the following conferences and seminars, in addition to the recent Istanbul gathering:

In July, Naru addressed 50 attendees at "The Legislative Process in the Arab World: Challenges and Opportunities," a two-day meeting in Amman, Jordan, sponsored by Birzeit University (Palestine), Vrije Universeteit (Belgium), and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Germany).

In September, DAI’s Naomi Humphries and Denis Gallagher attended "Regulatory Reform in South East Europe," a two-day event in Zagreb, Croatia, sponsored by the World Bank’s Foreign Investment Advisory Service, the Croatian government, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Croatian Chamber of Economy. Gallagher, currently doing enabling environment work for the Technical Assistance for Policy Reform II project in Egypt, then took an Egyptian delegation to Moldova, where DAI’s Richard Waddington and Eugen Osmochescu gave a presentation on DAI’s work in better regulation.

In October, Osmochescu addressed 30 participants at the OECD-sponsored "Improving RIA in South East Europe" event in Belgrade, Serbia.

In November, DAI’s Patrick Banya spoke before 200 attendees at the "Creating Better Business Environments for Enterprise Development" conference in Accra, Ghana, a three-day event sponsored by the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development. Naru and Banya also facilitated and addressed, respectively, a workshop for donors and Government of Ghana representatives designed to explore regulatory reform in that country.

For more on DAI’s better regulation approach, click here or contact Faisal Naru directly. Better regulation and the enabling environment is also the subject of Breaking the Rules that Bind: Freeing Private Enterprise from the Shackles of Regulation, a recent issue of the DAI journal, Developing Alternatives.