DUSHANBE, June 29, 2012, Asia-Plus – Promoting a service orientation in public agencies to improve quality of service delivery to private enterprises was the main topic of discussion that took place at the State Committee for Investment and State-owned Property Management on June 28, press release issued by the World Bank Country Office in Dushanbe said.
This event, co-organized by the State Committee for Investment and State Property Management and the World Bank Group, reportedly hosted a number of public agencies and representatives from the government, the private sector, and the donor community to present a subset of preliminary findings of the International Finance Corporation’s Business Environment and Enterprise survey.
While Tajikistan has improved on indicators such as Doing Business, recent data on governance and service delivery shows that there are additional opportunities for public agencies to increase their efficiency, and undertake reforms to reduce the regulatory and administrative burden on firms.
As the results of the nationwide survey indicate, the three type of businesses in the country, namely the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Individual Entrepreneurs, and Dehqon Farmers, share some common obstacles in doing business. The survey reveals that those public agencies that interact with businesses most frequently are perceived as being more problematic by the private sector.
The results provide evidence that the service quality in the eyes of the private sector decreases with the number of interactions with public agencies. One implication of this finding is that moving from a control and compliance model to a more service-oriented approach may not only increase efficiency of the individual agencies, but also improve perceptions of public agencies from the perspective of the private sector.
