By INDERIA SAUNDERS, Guardian Business Desk

Work being done by the Attorney General's office to reduce the backlog of court cases may finally be paying off, with a recent World Bank report indicating The Bahamas has moved up the global rankings in terms contract enforcement — or at least that's the perception.

It's a move that appears to be the single brightest spot for the jurisdiction in the Bank's new Doing Business 2009 study, and shows progress made — or at least the appearance of it — on enforcing contracts. The 2009 ranking represents a two-point jump from 2008, and took into consideration a list of procedural steps necessary to enforce a contract, including filing and service, trial and judgment and the enforcement of that judgment.

The report is a positive one for any country trying to grow investor confidence in its destination. The Bahamas advancement may be largely pinned to the growing confidence among members of the business community and those catering to offshore clients that the time it takes to get a case before the courts has in fact been shortened. Also helping improve perceptions is the fleshing out of the judicial field of jurists and plans for the development of additional court space in Nassau.

It looks especially good on The Bahamas that a case involving a legal firm attached to a top level government official has been brought to the courts in a somewhat timely fashion, with a ruling actually against the firm.

That stance taken by the court may a go a long way toward further advancing the Bahamian standing for 2010 in this and other World Bank categories, including the protection afforded investors in this country.

That category found The Bahamas lagging behind by three points for 2009 compared to the previous study. According to the World Bank report, that unhappy digression is the result for three factors.

"Transparency of related-party transactions (extent of disclosure index), liability for self-dealing (extent of director liability index) and shareholders' ability to sue officers and directors for misconduct (ease of shareholder suits index)," reads the report released last year. "The data come from a survey of corporate lawyers and are based on securities regulations, company laws and court rules of evidence."

It's but one of 11 categories this country was rated in — the rest overwhelming suggesting that getting business done here is getting more onerous, relative to the rest of the countries tracked by the study.

One area, in fact the only other category, where The Bahamas came up positively — if only slightly — was in ease of trade across borders. We moved up by one point. It likely takes into consideration the government's move to cleanup the customs tax system by consolidating stamp tax and duties into one duty, ostensibly making it easier for businesses to understand their tax obligations and meet them.

In order to get its results, the Doing Business report compiled procedural requirements for exporting and importing a standardized cargo of goods by ocean transport, according to the World Bank Web site.

"Every official procedure for exporting and importing the goods is recorded — from the contractual agreement between the 2 parties to the delivery of goods — along with the time and cost necessary for completion."