Russia edges 8 notches higher in the latest Doing Business report issued by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation.

In its tenth edition, Russia was placed on 112th place in the 185-country list, moving up from 120th. The progress appears to reflect the government’s drive to rally investors to sectors other than oil and gas.

The Russian authorities have been hard pressed to move economy forward, with the net capital outflow over the past nine months standing at almost $58 billion. In May, they announced an ambitious plan to jump, skip and hop over 100 positions to reach the Top 20 business-friendly states by 2018.

So this year’s 8-point step appears to be quite a leap forward, with Russia now sandwiched between Palau and Salvador.

According to the report, Russia has streamlined its procedures in just two areas – issue of construction permits and paying taxes. It got rid of requirements for several preconstruction approvals and eased compliance procedures for VAT and promoted the use of tax accounting, concludes the WB.

Still, it’s a million light years away from leading business-conscious nations like Singapore. While dealing with construction permits in Singapore takes 26 days and costs 16.7% of income per capita, in Russia it requires 344 days, 42 different papers and 129.2% of income per capita.

So on the one hand, it’s good to be praised by the WB, but on the other it’s still riddled with red tape, lagging behind in 178^th place – out of 185!

And in such key aspect for investors as getting an electricity connection it’s even lower - 184th.

If you are about to import something to Russia, you’ll need to make sure you have obtained 11 documents and they are all properly filled out and rubberstamped, while in France or South Korea, for example, you would just need 2 and 3 respectively.

You can download the full report here.  Below is the data for Russia.