Enterprise Benchmarking Program

MIGA’s Enterprise Benchmarking Program (EBP) is an innovative tool that gauges a country’s ability to compete with other potential sites and locations for foreign investment. The program provides a comparative analysis of a country’s competitiveness by sector. The end result is a practical snapshot of conditions and opportunities that provides investors with an important tool for organizing their site selection research, while saving valuable time and money by eliminating the need to conduct the detailed analysis on their own. Policymakers and investment promotion intermediaries benefit from the data as well.

The EBP is an offshoot of MIGA's Snapshot Asia publication, a 2003 report that examined two industry sectors in six Asian countries. Following publication of this ground-breaking report, MIGA received requests from client countries to undertake similar studies in other regions.

Sichuan, China. Working with the International Finance Corporation’s PEP China Facility, MIGA produced the Snapshot Sichuan publication, which was distributed at the World Bank Group’s Private Sector Development Forum in April 2006. The report highlights the competitiveness of the underdeveloped western region of China in key sectors, and gives an indication of how it measures up in cost to better-known locations on the coast. The Chinese language version of the report was published in China in June 2006 by MIGA’s local counterpart for the study—the Enterprise Survey Office of the Sichuan Provincial Statistics Bureau—and has already stimulated dialogue between the public and private sector with regard to investment and business operating conditions.

Western Balkans. MIGA has also recently published Investment Horizons: Western Balkans, a study of foreign direct investment costs and conditions for automotive component manufacturing and food and beverage processing in Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro. The study was designed in conjunction with the ongoing European Investor Outreach Program (EIOP) , a MIGA initiative focused on the Western Balkans and funded through a grant from the Austrian government.

Sub-Saharan Africa. The wide-ranging Africa benchmarking study has also been completed, with country analyses distributed to each of the client governments, and a combined Snapshot Africa report now under preparation. Countries covered include Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. The studies examined the following sectors for most of the countries: apparel, textile manufacturing, call centers, tourism, horticulture, and food and beverages. The findings for each country—including SWOT analyses, cross-comparison of costs of operation, and quality of investment environment (by sector)—were summarized in confidential documents available only to the respective investment promotion agencies. The reports are intended as a basis for discussion with private sector representatives and the donor community.

Other benchmarking efforts. In collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat, a benchmarking analysis of four countries in the Caribbean and Central America is currently underway, examining their competitiveness in tourism, offshore services, and agribusiness. In a related effort, in 2005 MIGA published a single country analysis of sector competitiveness—Investment Horizons: Afghanistan—assessing prospects for FDI in transport and logistics, carpets and textiles, food and beverage processing, and mining. The study was part of a larger project funded through a grant from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany (also known as BMZ - Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung). 

MIGA’s program is closely coordinated with the investment climate work of the World Bank and IFC, and seeks to complement the World Bank Group’s analytic and policy dialogue tools, such as the Investment Climate Assessments and the Doing Business indicators. MIGA has created an EBP advisory panel to provide representatives of the World Bank’s investment climate unit, Development Economics, and Foreign Investment Advisory Service groups with an opportunity to advise on the work program and review all work products to ensure better integration with the World Bank’s private sector development agenda.

The benchmarking methodology is being updated and revised to reflect the experiences in implementing it over the past months, and to ensure that it is generating data that is useful and used by our clients. In FY07, MIGA will continue to deploy the EBP on a global basis, responding to client needs and demands, and in coordination with World Bank, FIAS, and the IFC PEP facilities.   

UPDATED June 15, 2006