Location: The Heritage Foundation's Allison Auditorium

The Business Growth Initiative (BGI) project of USAID and The Heritage Foundation are pleased to host a forum featuring panelists from the World Bank's Doing Business, the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness, The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom and the Global Entreprenurial Research Associations's Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

Economic research has empirically demonstrated that a positive business environment fosters enterprise development and overall economic growth.  Determining what constitutes a positive business environment depends widely on factors often outside the influence of the average business owner.  The wide range of factors affecting business environments includes commercial law, sound public institutions, open trade policy, infrastructure, technology and others.

International organizations, non-governmental organizations, think tanks and private businesses have developed methodologies and ranking systems for evaluating business environments across countries.  Each ranking uses a unique approach and definition of what constitutes an enabling business environment.  The forum will enable the various presenters and audience members to discuss similarities and differences in four international ranking systems and explore how the rankings may be used together in promoting enterprise development projects and overall economic growth.