IFC updates data for Land Rights and Access indicator

This week the IFC released data from its new 2007 "Doing Business" survey. The update includes new data on the cost and time to register property, both of which are components of the new "Land Rights and Access" indicator that the MCC will use this year as supplemental information in making its selections for MCC eligibility. We provided an analysis of the new indicators earlier this week.The good news is that with the new data, which were released just after our paper, country coverage for the new Land Rights and Access indicator increased from 81 to 91 out of 113 MCA candidate countries. While the increased coverage is welcome, our basic concern still holds that incomplete country coverage weakens this new indicator. With data missing for 22 countries, nearly one-fifth of all candidate countries fail this indicator simply because of missing data. Only one other MCC indicator--the trade index--is missing data for more countries (23).Some have argued that the weak coverage is not a problem because many of the countries with missing data would not be selected by the MCC anyway. But that argument really doesn't carry water--one of the MCC's criteria for solid indicators is strong country coverage, regardless of whether countries would be chosen anyway. Moreover, missing data affect the median score, and therefore the qualifying standard for all countries.So while the new data is good news, country coverage for this indicator remains a concern, and the MCC will have to work closely with the IFC and particularly with IFAD (which produces the other components of the Land Rights and Access indicator) to continue to increase coverage as soon as possible. The MCC has shown in the past that it can be effective in working with other groups to increase coverage of the indicators, so we have reason to hope that by next year when the new indicator will be used as a core indicator, the MCC will have taken steps to help data coverage expand even further.