WASHINGTON D.C. – 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, released Tuesday, records 58 reforms implemented in 23 of the region’s 25 economies.

Accordingly, Armenia has made dealing with construction permits easier by exempting lower risk projects from requirements for approval of the architectural drawings by an independent expert and for technical supervision of the construction. Besides, by joining the Eurasian Economic Union the country has reduced the time and cost for documentary and border compliance for trade with the Russian Federation. Finally, enforcing contracts is now easier through a new law requiring that cases be assigned to judges randomly, and through a fully automated system, in courts throughout the country.

Kazakhstan, with a global ranking of 41, implemented the most reforms in the world, with seven improvements to its business regulations during the past year, followed by Russia (ranked 51) and Cyprus (47), which implemented five reforms each.

Notable improvements in Kazakhstan included the elimination of a number of superfluous bureaucratic impediments in several areas, including Starting a Business, Registering Property, and Enforcing Contracts. Russia ranks in the world’s top 10 for Registering Property and gets a perfect score for reliability of electricity supply and transparency of electricity tariffs. Cyprus, meanwhile, made substantial improvements on resolving insolvency.

The reforms implemented in Europe and Central Asia accounted for 25 percent of the 231 reforms implemented worldwide during the past year. The region also boasted three of the world’s top 10 improvers, i.e. countries that implemented at least three reforms and moved up on the global rankings scale, with Cyprus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.

“It is commendable that almost every single economy in Europe and Central Asia implemented at least one reform in the last year to improve the business environment,” said Rita Ramalho, Manager of the Doing Business project. “The political commitment and hard work involved in implementing these reforms has allowed the region’s economies to break into top performers on most of the indicators measured by the report.”