A critical view of the World Bank’s Doing Business publication was expressed by UN assistant secretary-general Ajay Chhibber in a recent blog on the causes of the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed over 1100 people last month.

He notes that Doing Business encourages the kind of lax regulation that led to this industrial disaster:

"Poor regulations and standards are widespread in sweat shops across the developing world…. The World Bank’s famous Ease of Doing Business Index widely used to improve business conditions around the world in fact encourages such practices, because its underlying premise is that less regulation is always better…. [Doing Business] gives high marks to fewer restrictions on permits for construction, ignoring safety and environmental concerns."

Read the blog post on the Financial Times