Regulatory Index of Serbia

At the end of 2012, NALED created an objective indicator of the quality of the business environment in our country - the Regulatory Index of Serbia (RIS), and since then, the quality of the regulatory environment has been monitored using this indicator. RIS is a quantitative, summary indicator of the transparency and quality of the legislative process, the promptness of the state in law enforcement, the predictability and competitiveness of the regulatory environment.

Information about regulations and changes in regulations is of crucial importance for economic entities, considering that they shape the rules of business on the market. The creation of a business environment stimulating for the development of the economy implies the fulfillment of several important prerequisites, among which the key ones are: predictability and stable economic policy without frequent and sudden changes and greater legal certainty, which is reflected in the consistent application of the law, efficient administration and transparent communication with state authorities. Precisely because of this, NALED formulated the Regulatory Index of Serbia - RIS with the aim of providing insight to both members and the general public into the manner and quality of the adoption and implementation of regulations in Serbia.

The RIS consists of six components, and each of them follows a certain phase of the adoption of the law:

1. The plan for amending and enacting laws, which should ensure the predictability of changes to the legal framework in the Republic of Serbia (Component 1);
2. Analyzes of the effects before the adoption of regulations (ex ante analyses), which contribute to the validity of decisions, that is, the adoption of regulations with the best ratio of costs and benefits (Component 2);
3. The quality of involvement of interested parties, which shows the level of transparency of the procedure for the preparation and adoption of laws (Component 3);
4. The method of implementation of the law, first of all the efficiency and timeliness of passing by-laws that enable the operational implementation of regulations (Component 4);
5. Openness of institutions during the implementation of the law, which shows whether and how open the institutions are to solving doubts regarding the law in their jurisdiction during the implementation of regulations (Component 5);
6. Monitoring the effects of the law, i.e. monitoring the regulatory burden imposed by the law and possible problems in implementation that may lead to a new change in regulations (Component 6).

The total value of RIS for the year 2021/22 is 47 out of a possible 100 points, which represents a halfway result in creating a stable and predictable regulatory environment and is almost unchanged compared to last year.

Some of the key results of this year's report are:

• The biggest increase this year compared to last year was achieved in the component of the involvement of the interested public in the preparation of regulations, bearing in mind that during the adoption of more than 90% of the regulations, some form of consultation with the economy was organized. In addition, only 6% of the laws were passed by emergency procedure.
• This year, the biggest drop was recorded in the component of information availability, i.e. the responsiveness of competent institutions, primarily due to the fact that the ministries answer only slightly more than half of the questions/concerns regarding the implementation of regulations.
• Timeliness of law enforcement is still the worst rated component of RIS with only 3 adopted by-laws of importance for the economy (out of a possible 111) in 2021 and an average delay in the adoption of regulations of 2.5 years.
• In addition, the economy has been indicating for a few years that the administrative burden is increasing again, as shown by the results of the USAID survey of 1000 companies, as well as the data on collected revenues from non-tax duties.