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Georgia: Licensing 159 activities—not 909
Georgia’s old byzantine system of construction licenses and permits used to deter entrepreneurs from building legally. But as the construction sector was heating up in Tbilisi, Georgia’s government decided to lift bureaucratic hurdles by passing 2005’s Law on Licensing and Permits and Regulation 140 (on issuing construction permits) just a few weeks later. The re¬sult: the number of activities requiring a business license fell from 909 to 159.
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Czech Republic: Creating a new profession from scratch
Until 2007, all construction permits in the Czech Republic were governed by a 1976 law. As in many other Eastern European countries, land allocation and construction were based mostly on administrative decisions and a planned economy, not supply and demand.
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Colombia: Private help for a public problem
In 1995, Colombia became the first country in all of Latin America to privatize its building-permit review process. Fourteen years after its initial implementation, the system’s impact on the construction process is palpable. This case study looks at the reform and its impact.
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