and which may reflect an empowerment of local businesses and an improvement of the business environment in the country. 233. It must be highlighted that initially there were some improvements in the ease of doing business, but in recent years the “Doing Business” index has been dropping, with the country´s ranking falling from 132nd (in 2010) to 139th position (in 2012). This ranking may be the result of other countries trying to improve their position or the result of insufficient reforms and weak capacity in the country to make the business environment attractive or to a worsening of the current conditions of doing business in Mozambique. 234. In comparative terms, it is noted that between 2010 and 2012, the country was in one of the worst positions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Notwithstanding this, the country stood out in 2010 as a result of the reforms undertaken in the legal environment, which placed it among the 20 countries with the most significant progress in creating favourable business conditions between 2006 and 2010. These reforms made the country stand out in terms of improvements in procedures and, as a result, in the time needed to licence a commercial activity, as well as in a drastic reduction of 7.5% in the cost of transfer of ownership. 235. The One-Stop-Shops (BAÚs) are one of the significant innovations that helped to speed up the business registration and licensing processes. These have been rolled-out countrywide, and have been accompanied by a modernisation process through their computerisation. During 2011, five BAÚs were included in the indexing process of the tourist area licensing processes. Over this same period, a guiding strategic plan for the consolidation of the BAÚs for the next five years was prepared. Also, a BAÚ Procedures Manual was prepared and disseminated to assist economic agents within the scope of the simplified licensing of economic activities (GdM, 2011). Progress was noted in this point, as regards the ease of registering and licensing businesses, which contributed to the efforts to improve the business environment in the Country, as had been recommended. 236. The APR Panel recommended that the country should create a private risk control centre and that it operate outside of the Bank of Mozambique, on the assumption that it would be easily accepted and would allow for a better selection and rewarding of borrowers based on their real risk. This initiative has not yet become a reality and work is still underway for its materialisation. A draft law on the credit information centres in Mozambique (private regime) was submitted to Government for due appraisal22. However, the referred-to Law has not yet been approved, which means that up to the time of this progress report, there were still no private risk control centres, meaning that the recommendation was not implemented. 237. The APR Panel also recommended that Mozambique must increase the issuance of public debt treasury bonds/bills with varied maturities to produce a “yield curve” to be used by the private sector to test the performance of prices practiced by the issuers of private debt instruments on the market. Here, significant progress has been made in terms of the issuance of public debt instruments by the government, but the impact of these issuances has not been producing the desired effect, or rather, the number of economic agents issuing private debt instruments is still very small, with recourse to traditional sources of financing – the banking system – still being predominant. Communication from the Bank of Mozambique to the Mozambican Bankers’ Association on the submission of the Draft Law on Private Credit Risk Information Centres, dated 13 February 2013 22 81