Britain has fallen three places down the World Bank’s latest list of best places to run a business.
The UK now lies in 10th place in the Doing Business index, with Singapore named as the easiest place (for the seventh consecutive year), followed by Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United States.
Entrepreneurs only have to wait one day to get all their paperwork complete in order to start up in New Zealand on average (and costs US$129), while in the Republic of Suriname it takes 208 days.
In the US, ranked 13th in the 2013 edition of the index, there are an average of six steps to start a business, with no minimum capital requirement.
The global average is 25 days to work through an average of seven administrative procedures in order to set up a business, the World Bank claims.
Chad was found to provide the worst environment for starting a business.
The World Bank rates economies in 10 categories and measures the number of bureaucratic and legal steps required to start a business or to register and transfer commercial property. It also examines how long it takes and how much it costs to comply with regulations, for example time and money needed to enforce contracts, file for bankruptcy or trade across borders. The report also measures the levels of legal protections for investors and property in place in a given country.
The World Bank recently noted that Russia has entered the top five of the world’s biggest economies, overtaking Germany. Russia’s US$3.4tn GDP now rates behind only the US, China, India and Japan.
Do you have news for CN? Email: pcolston@mashmedia.net