By the late 1990s, the importance of the business environment for development was known, but the data was not there to assess the business environment and its impact on enterprise performance. The Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS), a joint initiative of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank, was devised in 1999 to meet this need.
A complete understanding of how weaknesses in the business environment affect firms can only be achieved by talking to them. In 1999, the first triennial BEEPS summary was carried out and was repeated in 2002 and 2005, when it was also extended to five Western European and two East Asian countries. In addition to the Europe and Central Asia Vice Presidency, the World Bank Institute and the Enterprise Analysis Unit have also participated over the years.
The first three rounds of the BEEPS have been completed and the results widely disseminated. The 2008 round of the BEEPS, currently underway, will have even larger samples than in the past, making it even more valuable as a tool for country-level analysis of the investment climate. The questions themselves will also be more closely harmonized with investment climate surveys done in other regions. The data is expected to become available in the fall of 2008.
"BEEPS gave us, as anticorruption activists, for the first time an instrument to measure trends on a yearly basis, knowing exactly what we measure and with enough confidence that change is not a result of some modification of methodology. In the anticorruption intense years of 2004-2005, BEEPS allowed us in Romania to prove that corruption is not a doom, that people do perceive good policies when they are enacted and, as such, offered a tool for the reformers to continue their work."
—Dr. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Leader of the Romanian Coalition for a Clean Parliament 2004; Leader of the Romanian Coalition for a Clean Parliament 2004; Professor, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin
"I like the BEEPS very much, but especially the 2005 results were very important. We had a conference in Warsaw where the results were presented, along with the study on Judicial Systems in Transition Economies, and it gave new impetus for reforms in Poland. In my opinion, which is shared by others, the BEEPS has helped steer reforms in the right direction."
—Jaroslaw Beldowski, President, FOR Foundation; former National Bank of Poland
"I found the BEEPS findings extremely useful during my mandate focused on fighting corruption in Romania. The BEEPS reports are independent monitoring tools and they should not stay in a drawer or be only one day news. The BEEPS findings should be working instruments for those governments or NGOs which are serious and sincere about fighting corruption. As I now advise on anti-corruption in Macedonia, I look forward to the 2008 BEEPS which I see as a scoping exercise in the evaluation of the corruption and a criteria for further strategies."
—Monica Macovei, Former Minister of Justice, Romania
BEEPS gives the most detailed and comprehensive firm-level data on business environment issues in ECA, with nearly universal coverage. More than 24,000 detailed firm-level surveys in 34 countries, including every ECA country except Turkmenistan, have been carried out since inception. BEEPS data has been used for studies of corruption, judicial systems, labor markets, innovation, competition, trade, finance and other topics.
BEEPS monitors the business environment in a comparative framework. BEEPS provided the backbone for the Anticorruption in Transition series which started in 2000, as well as for Judicial Systems in Transition Economies, both of which monitor changes over time for insights into what is working, what is not, and what challenges remain. The 2002 and 2005 rounds included a longitudinal element of some 1,400 firms. The value of the BEEPS for monitoring was also highlighted in the Global Monitoring Report (2006) and the World Bank Group’s Governance and Anticorruption Strategy (2007).
BEEPS helps to shape the public debate on key issues, through coverage in international, including The Economist and the Wall Street Journal Europe, as well as over a hundred local and regional newspapers and media outlets.
BEEPS is a public good, available for policy makers and researchers alike. EBRD and the World Bank make the results and data fully available on their web sites.
Comparisons over time, for 27 countries and four regions within ECA, and internationally, are publicly available.
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