This report is produced by the Doing Business project, which provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 183 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level.

Arab economies have picked up the pace of business regulatory reform in the past year, according to Doing Business in the Arab World 2010.

Released on Nov. 8, the report examines the business regulatory environment of 20 Arab economies within the Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors found that 16 Arab economies introduced 38 reforms that made it easier to do business and 2 reforms that made doing business more difficult  during the period studied (June 2008 and May 2009). The United Arab Emirates and the Arab Republic of Egypt rank among the top 10 global reformers in 2008/09, Egypt for the fourth time.

Last year’s Doing Business in the Arab World 2009 showed similar findings: 13 Arab economies introduced 31 reforms