Regulatory reforms have reduced the cost and hassle involved when doing business worldwide. Georgia, Romania and Mexico top the list of reformers, while Africa's progress overtakes that of Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

6 September 2006

AMSTERDAM - Regulatory reforms have reduced the cost and hassle involved when doing business worldwide. Georgia, Romania and Mexico top the list of reformers, while Africa's progress overtakes that of Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

A new report by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC)shows that doing business became easier worldwide in 2005 and 2006, with two hundred and thirteen regulatory reforms in 112 economies reducing the time, cost, and hassle for businesses to comply with legal and administrative requirements.

The report, Doing Business 2007: How to Reform, also ranks Africa's progress in reforming ahead of that of Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Over 2005 and 2006, two-thirds of African countries made at least one reform, and Tanzania and Ghana rank 9th and 10th out of the top ten reformers.

The other eight top reformers on the ease of doing business are Georgia,the number one reformer, which improved in six of the ten areas surveyed, followed by Romania, Mexico, China, Peru, France, Croatia and Guatemala.

Thirteen other economies - Armenia, Australia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, El Salvador, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria and Rwanda - had three or more reforms.

The reformers simplified business regulations, strengthened property rights, eased tax burdens, increased access to credit, and reduced the cost of exporting and importing.

The most popular reform worldwide was easing the regulations of business start-up and the second most popular reform was reducing tax rates and the administrative hassle of paying taxes.

Essentially, said Simeon Djankov, an author of the report, "Reforms should ease the burden on all businesses: small and large, domestic and foreign, rural and urban. This way there is no need to guess where the next boom in jobs will come from. Any business will have the opportunity to thrive."

[Copyright Expatica 2006]