The famous Doing Business report was officially abandoned by the World Bank on September 16, 2021. This decision was made following a scandal that revealed “irregularities in the data” and manipulations of the rankings to favor certain major economic powers such as China and Saudi Arabia.
Before its definitive abandonment, the report’s publication had already been suspended in August 2020.
It is not known whether the World Bank was able to overcome these deficiencies, whether it conducted an investigation, what it revealed about the scandalous manipulations, their perpetrators and whether they were punished.
“The king [Ed: King of the seers] is dead, long live the king.” Here is the child of DB, the Business Ready 2025 (B-READY), the first of its kind after the death of Doing Business, both produced by the World Bank.
Understanding Tunisia’s ranking in BR
It should be noted that if an economy (or a specific topic of a country, such as international trade or taxation) is ranked in the 4th quintile, this means its scores are among the lowest 60%–80% globally. About 60% of tested countries perform better. It only surpasses the 20% of countries in the last quintile (the 5th).
In simpler terms, the 1st quintile (Top 20%) is for the highest-performing economies (“champions”). The 2nd quintile is for high-performing countries. The 3rd quintile is for average-performing countries. The 4th quintile is for low-performing economies: this is the case for Tunisia. Only the 5th quintile (Bottom 20%) performs worse.
In Business Ready 2025, the ranking is based on three pillars. In the first pillar, the regulatory framework, Tunisia scores 62.56 (4th quintile). In the second pillar, public services, it scores 43.02 (4th quintile). And for operational efficiency, the Tunisian economy scores 52.46 (4th quintile).
Decoding Tunisia’s ranking
In the new global business climate barometer, Business Ready 2025, Tunisia is positioned as a transition economy. While it shows solid foundations compared to the African average, comparison with its Maghreb neighbors and international standards reveals significant room for improvement, especially in transforming legislative texts into concrete services for businesses.
Model Duel (Tunisia vs Morocco vs Algeria)
The report places Tunisia in direct competition with Morocco on the pillars of regulatory quality and public services.
Regulatory Framework (Pillar I): Tunisia maintains a robust score, often above the regional average. It has structured laws relating to business creation and taxation. However, Morocco shows a slight lead in integrating reforms related to international trade.
Public Services (Pillar II): This is Tunisia’s relative strength in the Maghreb. The country benefits from an established institutional infrastructure and public service systems (energy, water, land registration) more mature than Algeria’s, although digitization of procedures remains an unfinished task.
Operational Efficiency (Pillar III): The weakness lies in implementation. The report highlights an “efficiency gap”: Tunisian businesses face administrative delays that, while below the Sub-Saharan African average, stagnate compared to the speed observed in Morocco or GCC countries.
Tunisia vs Sub-Saharan Africa: The infrastructure advantage
Compared to the rest of the continent, Tunisia operates in a higher category, mainly due to its human development level and infrastructure:
Access to services: While Sub-Saharan Africa struggles with an average score of 38.92 in the public services pillar, Tunisia is among the African leaders (alongside South Africa and Mauritius), theoretically facilitating industrial establishment.
Workforce: Tunisia is ranked among economies with a “mature” workforce. Unlike West or East African countries facing a youth population explosion requiring massive job creation, Tunisia must focus on high productivity and integrating graduates.
Strengths and weaknesses
The report identifies sectors where Tunisia stands out globally:
Top performance: Tunisia manages to place some of its topics (like Business Creation or Financial Services) in the global top 20% or 40%. This performance is matched by only a few African countries (Rwanda, Togo, Mauritius).
The insolvency obstacle: Like many economies in the MENA region, Tunisia scores poorly on “Insolvency Resolution.” Bankruptcy procedures remain long and costly, hindering risk-taking and foreign investment.
The Business Ready 2025 report presents Tunisia as an economy “ready” on paper (Pillars I and II), but struggling to turn this advantage into operational agility (Pillar III) capable of outpacing its direct competitors.
For investors, Tunisia remains an attractive destination for its institutional maturity, but slow operational processes remain the main barrier to joining the high-performance group.
Key insights from the report
In the Maghreb, Tunisia ranks behind Morocco on all pillars. Morocco has an average score of about 63.4 points versus 52.7 for Tunisia. Algeria is not covered in this B-READY 2025 edition.
In Africa, among the 10 African countries in the report, Tunisia ranks in the middle of the table (5th/10), behind Mauritius, Rwanda, Morocco, and Ghana, but ahead of Senegal, Togo, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon.
A notable point in the report: Tunisia has between 1 and 3 topics in the top quintile (Figure 3.8 of the document), notably thanks to its score in Business Entry (87.01, one of the best in Africa), which is a real advantage despite marked delays in public services and operational efficiency.
