Regulatory impact assessment – towards better regulation

Regulatory impact assessment or RIA is a tool for providing systematic assessment of positive and negative impacts of the proposed and existing regulations, with the aim of improving the quality of a regulatory policy. International experience reveals that RIA is currently being used significantly in a number of countries around the world. In several of these countries, RIA was developed as a response to the growing volume and complexity of government regulations in the 1980s. RIA has been adopted in most OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, and at the beginning of 2001, 20 out of the 28 member countries were applying RIA, although the extent of use varied.