Building Public Trust to Improve the Business Environment

This post was written by Gabriel Falk for USAID’s Trade and Competitiveness Activity (TCA).

A healthy, trusting relationship is essential to any successful development endeavor, and building this trust promotes buy-in from all relevant actors. This is especially critical to promoting a healthy business enabling environment where policymakers and regulatory authorities trust businesses to abide by regulations, and private firms trust that the public sector will uphold its commitments to maintain the rule of law, stability, and predictability of investment outcomes. This July, Marketlinks explores the importance of trust between government and firms in the regulatory environment for businesses. 

Developing a business-friendly environment is a joint effort between groups. Policymakers must ensure a stable and predictable legal and regulatory framework for investment. The public must buy-in and support new businesses with purchasing and labor. And private investors provide base capital and commercial experience that can help build economies securely. Because each of these disparate groups has their own goals and past experiences, finding common ground on which to build mutual trust is the keystone for any successful partnership. 

Business environment reform seeks to balance the competing priorities that underlie the development of a new competitive market. The balancing act is often between the need for governments to legitimately regulate in certain areas and the need for businesses to operate efficiently with as few costs and obstacles as possible. To maintain this delicate balance, regulators must work with private firms and public markets to design sensible and evidence-based frameworks that move the market towards competitiveness, public benefit, and stability.

Throughout July 2022, Marketlinks will promote discussions around ways to implement accountability and transparency incentives into business environments in a number of different contexts. In areas where the private sector has been crippled by economic recession or outdated regulation, government accountability advocates must aim to streamline the processes for businesses to enter and operate in the market, reduce the cost of doing business, and build a space for government and businesses to collaborate. In response, the private sector must also contribute its experiences, knowledge, and capital to addressing development challenges where possible. In all cases, development partners play an important role in bringing government and the private sector together to find common ground in the pursuit of economic growth and overall better development outcomes.

To delve deeper, the USAID-funded Trade and Competitiveness Activity (TCA) and Marketlinks will host a discussion on trust in building business-enabling environments and durable market solutions to assess and build trade relationships across the globe, from Paraguay to Vietnam. This webinar, Building Public Trust to Improve the Business Environment, will be facilitated by Moussa Traoré, Business Enabling Environment Advisor for USAID/EMD, and Margot Kitonis, Senior Communications Advisor for USAID/EMD. Join the conversation on Wednesday, July 20, at 09:00 ET by registering here. 

Marketlinks will share blog posts from businesses enabling environment experts in the private and public sectors. We invite you to join this discussion on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or to write a guest blog post. Please email info@marketlinks.org to submit businesses enabling environment information that you would like to share.