Doing Business Blog - The World Bank Group

Knowing the “Right Person”

Trying to hunt for the “real formula of fees” to connect to electricity can be a challenge in Tajikistan. I realized that during my recent trip for data collection there. Special decrees and fee schedules are not publicly available. Construction specialists warned me of reluctance on the side of state agencies to share information. Phone calls to the State Electric Company (Barki Tojik) to get the real fee schedule and ultimate cost that companies would have to pay for obtaining electricity connection, were in vain. The person on the other end in the State Electric Company was not forthcoming.

I had to do it the only way: find “the right person”.

Collecting Data for Doing Business – “Imagination at Work”

Diplomatic protocol is not dead – it helped me obtain the Standing Orders of the Parliament of Swaziland!

“Diplomatic protocol is dying”. That is what I was told at my introductory university class of what had just been re-baptized “regional studies and diplomacy” where this fascinating word 'diplomacy' had been pushed to a timid second place, with “that kind of useless stuff, you know!”

Doing Business data collection can be perfect on-the-job training in Internet browsing, phone and face-to-face communication, psychology, cultural sensitivity, effective business letter writing… The highlight of this fall was a lesson in irony--seemingly straightforward, practically next to impossible. I needed to obtain the Standing Orders of the Parliament of Swaziland, which is fundamental legal material for the Doing Business transparency project. And what really made me succeed in this venture is my everlasting fascination with the magnificent elegant style of the old days’ diplomatic correspondence, carried by horseback couriers.