Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called on his government to move Ukraine up the World Bank’s Doing Business rating by at least another 30 points, without giving a time frame.

“In 2012-2013 Ukraine ranked 152nd in the Doing Business rating, in 2014-2016 it climbed to the 80th position from the 152nd one. I find it totally unacceptable … I set the task to climb up by another 30 points,” he said during the Ukrainian-Lithuanian business forum in Kyiv.

Poroshenko stressed that due to deregulation efforts being made by Ukraine this task is absolutely real.

The Ukraine president was echoing his nemesis President Vladimir Putin, who made a similar demand at the Sberbank annual investment summit in 2012 when he called on his government to move Russia from its 120^th place in the annual ranking up to the top 20 by 2018.

Putin should be pleased with his team as Russia is on course to meet this goal, ranking 40^th in the latest version of the World Bank’s survey.

Ukraine has further to go and the post-Maidan government has been struggling to get to grips with reform – especially after most of its more liberal and effective reform ministers have quit.

However, Ukraine does already score well in some categories. It is in the top 20 out of a total of 190 countries for the ease of getting credits and starting a new business, but it is in the bottom 50 countries in the world for getting electricity (130), getting construction permits (140) and insolvency resolution (150).

The World Bank ranking is a useful short hand ranking that is popular with presidents as the subcategories are tightly defined and it is relatively simple to move up the ranking by merely ticking the World Bank’s boxes, gifting the president with some boasting rights, but less effective when it comes to actually improving the business climate.