Macedonia is the region’s highest ranking economy, with a global ranking of 12 out of 189 economies from around the world, reads the World Bank Doing Business 2016 report, released on Tuesday.

The country excels in several areas of the ease of doing business, and also undertook reforms in the past year. For example, Macedonia further simplified the process of starting a business by introducing compulsory online registration. As a result, the country is now the second best performer globally in the area of Starting a Business.

Lithuania and Latvia are the second and third highest ranking economies in the region, with a global ranking of 20 and 22, respectively.

Over 90 percent of economies in the Europe and Central Asia region implemented reforms to improve their business climate during the past year, finds the World Bank Group’s annual ease of doing business measurement.

Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency, a World Bank Group flagship publication, is the 13th in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.

Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 189 economies.

Doing Business measures regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking.

Data in Doing Business 2016 are current as of June 1, 2015. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why. This year’s Doing Business report continues a two-year process of introducing improvements in 8 of 10 Doing Business indicator sets—to complement the emphasis on the efficiency of regulation with a greater focus on its quality.