Beginning in 2007, Jacobs, Cordova & Associates assisted the World Bank/IFC/FIAS in developing and implementing a systemic reform strategy to improve the regulatory environment at sub national levels of government in the region. Most of the work focused on launching regulatory guillotines in three municipalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), four in Serbia and three in Montenegro. For each ‘municipal guillotine’, a completed registry of licenses and permits was created and posted on internet. This inventory was reviewed by stakeholders and by a task force of lawyers and economists verifying the legality, necessity and business friendliness of all formalities listed by public authorities. Only those publicly justified were included in an internet-based registry. Overall, the municipal guillotines reduced by 10 to 40% the number of formalities and simplified more than 2/3 of the remaining ones. Many of the reforms targeted costly formalities documented in the Doing Business indicators. In parallel, JC&A supported the development of two pilots RIAs at national and at regional level as well as improving the inception systems in one of the regional entities of BiH. In 2008, World Bank IFC/FIAS asked JC&A for further support to assist the review and the creation of new registries in more than dozen of municipalities in Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro and continue its work on RIA, Guillotines and inspection reform.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro, World Bank, 2007-2010.
