WB names Singapore and Hong Kong best for business

Singapore and Hong Kong rank the world’s best places to run a business, while mainland China  remains far down the list, according to the World Bank’s annual competitiveness survey yesterday.

The Southeast Asian entrepots and finance centers topped the survey for the eighth straight year, with New Zealand, the United States and Denmark rounding out the top five, as a year ago.

The lower ranks of the 189-country list was populated with African countries like Chad, the Central African Republic and Libya holding.

But a rising African country, Rwanda, took honors as the most improved since 2005, praised for its efforts to boost property registration and for simplifying trading and tax procedures.

China, which was furious to receive a ranking of 91 last year and has pressured the World Bank to drop the 11-year-old study, fell five notches this year to 96th place and was leapfrogged by Russia.

The “Doing Business 2014” report said many countries are making it easier for people to start and run a local business, with low-income economies moving more quickly than larger ones to improve.

“Regulation is a reality from the beginning of a firm’s life to the end,” the report says. “Navigating it can be complex and costly.”

But in many areas, it added, “there has been remarkable progress in removing some of the biggest bureaucratic obstacles to private sector activity.” The rankings focus on what a small or medium-sized business faces in its home country, as opposed to how a multinational giant would fare in the
same environment.

The data was based on surveys of more than 10,000 professionals, mostly people who routinely help administer or give advice on legal and regulatory issues in a country.


/HurriyetDailynews/