By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters] – Carmen Reinhart, chief economist at the World Bank, said that in approximately two years, the World Bank would unveil a replacement report for its flagship Doing Business’ study on countries’ economic climate. The original was canceled following a data-rigging scandal.

Reinhart was promoted to the top of the bank’s senior management in an effort to restore its reputation after ethics concerns. Reinhart stated that some important concepts were already known for the new product.

These include a greater level of transparency in the method, greater trust on companies’ survey data, and less emphasis on ranking countries.

Reinhart explained that “the underlying nuts, bolts and secrets will be public domain.” Reinhart stated that public disclosure was an important part of restoring credibility.

Also, the bank would emphasize survey data in order to decrease the importance of judgement and remove the “beauty contest” aspect of the rankings which incentivized nations to “game” the system.

After an audit of data irregularities found in both the 2018 and 2020 rankings, the board of the bank decided to stop publishing the “Doing Business” annual ranking. This was after senior bank executives, including Kristalina Georgieva (now the IMF’s chief executive), pressured employees into making changes.

WilmerHale, a law firm, is currently working on a second investigation into possible employee misconduct regarding the data modifications that benefitted China, Saudi Arabia, and other countries.

The International Monetary Fund’s board backed Georgieva https://www.reuters.com/business/imf-board-resume-debate-over-georgievas-future-later-monday-2021-10-11 after a lengthy review of the allegations, but she could still be implicated in the second review.

Reinhart stated that the scandal has damaged the credibility and reputation of the World Bank and that it will take time to restore trust.

She stated that credibility metrics aren’t personality-based but systems-based and that there have been “a lot” of safeguards in place over the last year, after having reviewed several reports from the outside.

It reduces the possibility of misuse and abuse, she stated. “Nothing is inherently safe.” “Hopefully credibility will follow. Credibility is something that can be difficult to build and very easy to lose. “But time will reveal.”

After internal concerns about the manipulation of data in the Doing Business reports, Reinhart asked for an extensive review by an outside advisory panel to examine the Doing Business method.

The resulting scathing 84-page review https://www.reuters.com/business/external-review-finds-deeper-rot-world-bank-doing-business-rankings-2021-09-20 called for a series of remedial actions and reforms, citing a pattern of government efforts to interfere with the scoring.

Reinhart said that it had stopped selling services of consulting to governments for improving scores. Reinhart said the practice was already overturned in 2020 and 2021.

Reinhart stated that the bank will take a deeper look at the implications of the scandal, and determine what additional measures are required after the WilmerHale second report is completed.

She said, “That’s a bridge that we will need to cross when the complete report is in.”