Henry Kirby in London -

The World Bank's “Doing Business 2015” survey saw Russia climb from 92nd place to 62nd – a far cry from the humble 112th spot it occupied only two years ago.

Changes to the World Bank’s methodology significantly aided Vladimir Putin’s cause; last year’s results were retrospectively adjusted to reflect this year’s methodology changes, which saw Russia's ranking jump from 92^nd to 64^th place in the 2014 rankings. Thus, while the methodological changes mean that figures between 2013 and 2014 are incomparable, the retrospective adjustments to the 2014 scores mean that year-on-year changes between 2014 and 2015 can be accurately gauged. So in this year's report, Russia actually only improved by two places.

Even with the outward appearance of a big gain, Russia is still languishing some distance from the 20^th place spot that Putin vowed to achieve by 2018.

As bne's chart shows, Russia's score for the efficiency of resolving insolvencies lagged behind the CEE/CIS average of 51.4, as it fell 0.4% from 49.8 to 49.6.

Russia’s score for dealing with construction permits saw a sharp rise of just under 20%, growing from 47.6 in 2014 to 56.7 this year, which while 4 points better than the BRICS average of 52.2, it is still 12 points behind the world average of 68.5.

More impressive are Russia’s scores for starting a business and for registering property, at 92.1% and 91.2%, respectively, both of which sit higher than the CEE/CIS and world averages.

Use the interactive chart below to track the Doing Business performances of various regions and countries over time, as well comparing specific countries and regions across all the survey’s indicators.