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Saudi Arabia, Bahrain lead GCC in World Bank's Doing Business report
Saudi Arabia leads the Gulf countries in global ranking in ease in doing business, according to the World Bank's latest Doing Business 2009 report published on Wednesday.
- By Saifur Rahman, Business Editor
- Published: 08:33 September 10, 2008
Dubai: It takes six days to start a business in Qatar, seven days in Egypt, 9 days in Bahrain, 12 days in Saudi Arabia and 17 days in the UAE, compared to just one day in New Zealand, according to the World Bank's latest Doing Business 2009 report published on Wednesday, an advanced copy of which was obtained by Gulf News.
Saudi Arabia leads the Gulf countries in global ranking in ease in doing business at 16, followed by Bahrain at 18, Qatar at 37 and the UAE at 46, the report shows.
Singapore tops the global rankings for a third consecutive year. New Zealand is runner-up, with the United States third.
“Saudi Arabia, a top regional reformer, made it easier to start a business by continuing to simplify formalities for commercial registration and reducing registration fees by 80 per cent,'' the report said.
“The time to start a business fell by 3 days. Saudi Arabia strengthened protections for minority shareholders through new provisions that prohibit interested parties from voting on the approval of related-party transactions and increase sanctions against directors for misconduct.
"And it was the only reformer in the region in the area of closing a business this year. Its Ministry of Commerce introduced strict deadlines for bankruptcy procedures.''
In the GCC, it takes five procedures to start a business in Lebanon, six in Egypt, Qatar and Morocco, seven in Bahrain, Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, while eight procedures in Iran, Syria and the UAE – compared to the global benchmark of a single procedure in New Zealand, the report shows.
“The Middle East and North Africa continues to ease the regulatory burden of doing business,'' the report says.
“Egypt is one of the top 10 economies that reformed their business regulations, while both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain rank among the top 25 worldwide on the ease of doing business,'' World Bank said in a statement.
The report highlighted the UAE's credit bureau, as a major reform initiative.
“Emcredit, started collecting information on the repayment pattern of individual borrowers as well as firms in February 2007. This has allowed better supervision of the debt level of banks and borrowers,'' the report said.
In two-thirds of the region's economies, the report records 27 reforms between June 2007 and June 2008 that make it easier to do business.
“Economies worldwide are increasingly committed to regulatory reforms, and this is evident in the Middle East and North Africa, the region with the second-largest share of economies that made it easier to do business,'' said Dahlia Khalifa, a coauthor of the report.
“Many economies, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are consistently making improvements and are advancing in the global rankings. Across the region, countries are making it easier to do business by looking to early pacesetters for ideas on how to reform,'' she added.
For the fifth year in a row, Eastern Europe and Central Asia led the world's regions, with more than 90 percent of its countries making reforms. Africa also had a record year for regulatory reforms, with 28 countries completing 58 reforms that make it easier to do business - more than in any other year. And three of the world's top 10 economies that reformed their business regulations are from the region.
“Economies need rules that are efficient, easy to use, and accessible to all who use them. Otherwise, businesses are trapped in the unregulated, informal economy, where they have less access to finance and hire fewer workers, and where workers lack the protection of labor law,'' said Michael Klein, World Bank/IFC Vice President for Financial and Private Sector Development.
“Doing Business encourages good rules, and good rules are a better basis for healthy business than ‘who you know,''' he added.
Global ranking
Regulatory reforms are gaining momentum worldwide, reaching record numbers this year, finds Doing Business 2009—the sixth in a series of annual reports published by IFC and the World Bank. The new report identifies 239 reforms between June 2007 and June 2008 that make it easier to do business in 113 economies.
Doing Business ranks economies based on 10 indicators of business regulation that record the time and cost to meet government requirements in starting and operating a business, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business. The rankings do not reflect such areas as macroeconomic policy, quality of infrastructure, currency volatility, investor perceptions, or crime rates.
Doing Business also ranks 181 economies on the overall regulatory ease of doing business.
The top 25 are, in order: Singapore, New Zealand, the United States, Hong Kong (China), Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Norway, Iceland, Japan, Thailand, Finland, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Bahrain, Belgium, Malaysia, Switzerland, Estonia, Korea, Mauritius, and Germany.
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