"Croatia's ranking in the latest edition of Doing Business, a report on the business climate released yesterday by the International Finance Corporation, does not reflect recent improvements in the country's business climate," Katsu said.
He added that he believes that "if the survey were undertaken today, it would result in a higher ranking (of Croatia) and that this would be reflected in the next survey due out in 2006".
"Since January 2005, which was the cut-off date for reforms tracked by the latest Doing Business 2006 survey, Croatia has undertaken a range of reforms in the areas of business entry and property registration," reads the statement.
"The methodology used to rank the economies, which looks at 10 indicators ranging from the time it takes to start a business to the ease of trading across borders, provides a useful snapshot of performance across countries. But it also has some serious limitations. For instance, some relevant actions taken by the Croatian government in 2004 to improve the business environment may not have been captured in the methodology of the survey," the statement explains adding that the Croatian government is not alone in having raised questions.
Katsu points out progress which the Ivo Sanader cabinet has made in making it easier to do business in Croatia.
"Examples include setting up a one-stop-shop for business registration and cutting the number of steps for registering a business from 12 to 5. Property registration is also being streamlined. Also, land registration transactions are no longer handled by judges, thus cutting registration time significantly and reducing the backlog by hundreds of thousands cases."
In its latest report on prospects for doing business in 2006, the World Bank ranked Croatia 118th on a list of 155 countries, the worst among East European countries.
Immediately after the publication fot the report, Croatian Prime Minister Sanader announced a response to this survey, announcing that his cabinet would lodge a protest with the World Bank over its assessment of the business climate in Croatia.
On Wednesday, the Croatian Finance Minister Ivan Suker wrote to officials of the World Bank in Zagreb and Washington, expressing surprise and disappointment over an assessment of the World Bank regarding the business climate in Croatia.
The Croatian finance ministry reported that Suker wrote to World Bank officials that the Bank's assessment ranking Croatia 118th on a list of 155 countries was not grounded on accurate and current figures.
Suker's letter was sent to Shigeo Katsu, who recently visited Croatia and could see for himself Croatia's achievements in the creation of conditions promoting business and investment, as well as to World Bank Executive Director Ad Melkert and the Bank's regional office director in Zagreb, Anand K. Seth.