Doing Business 2015: FYR Macedonia once again among the region’s highest performers | WPN World People News

A new World Bank Group report finds that 85 percent of economies in Europe and Central Asia implemented at least one regulatory reform aimed at making it easier for local entrepreneurs to do business in 2013/14, a larger percentage than in any other region.

Doing Business 2015: Going Beyond Efficiency shows that in the past year, economies in Europe and Central Asia further improved the regulatory environment for local entrepreneurs, adding to the gains recorded in the past decade. For example, 10 years ago, starting a new business took a Macedonian entrepreneur 48 days. The process can be completed in 2 days.

“Economies in Europe and Central Asia have consistently led the world in the pace of regulatory reform,” said Rita Ramalho, Doing Business report lead author, World Bank Group. “Governments’ commitment to improving the regulatory environment for entrepreneurs has allowed them to close the gap with the top performers in some areas. For example, the average time to register property in the region has fallen by 14 days since 2010, making the process faster than in OECD high-income economies.”

Doing Business finds that Azerbaijan and Tajikistan were among the top improvers worldwide in 2013/14 in the areas of business regulation measured by the report. Challenges continue in both countries, however. For example, obtaining an electricity connection takes longer for entrepreneurs in these two countries than it does for their counterparts in most other economies in Europe and Central Asia.

Singapore again tops the global ranking on the ease of doing business. Joining it on the list of the top 10 economies with the most business-friendly regulatory environments are New Zealand; Hong Kong SAR, China; Denmark; the Republic of Korea; Norway; the United States; the United Kingdom; Finland; and Australia.

Challenges persist across the region’s economies even as the regulatory framework for entrepreneurs continues to improve, emphasizing the need for further regulatory reforms. This is particularly so in such areas as construction permitting, getting electricity, and trading across borders, all areas in which the region’s economies are in the bottom half of the global ranking on average.

This year, for the first time, Doing Business collected data for a second city in the 11 economies with a population of more than 100 million. In the Russian Federation, the report now analyzes business regulations in both Moscow and St. Petersburg. Differences between cities are common in indicators measuring the steps, time, and cost to complete regulatory transactions where local agencies play a larger role, finds the report.

This year the report expands the data for three of the ten topics covered, and there are plans to do so for five more topics next year. In addition, the ease of doing business ranking is now based on the distance to frontier score. This measure shows how close each economy is to global best practices in business regulation. A higher score indicates a more efficient business environment and stronger legal institutions.

The application of the new methodology in this year’s report has not significantly affected the ranking of countries, and the same methodology was retroactively applied to last year’s data to measure progress. In the case of FYR Macedonia, the country remains among top performers globally on the ease of doing business, improving its ranking from the 31st place last year (recalculated using the new methodology) to the 30th place in this year’s report. The country has also moved closer to the best global practice, a more important measure of progress than the ranking as it does not depend on the relative performance of other countries.

The new “distance to frontier” measure shows how well each economy is doing in relation to the global best practice, highest performance observed on each of the indicators across all economies measured in Doing Business. An economy’s distance to frontier is reflected on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the lowest performance and 100 represent the frontier. According to the Doing Business Report 2015, FYR Macedonia’s score is 74.1 percent, which is a 1.4 percentage points’ improvement from 2014. FYR Macedonia made starting a business easier by making online registration free of charge. Minority investor protections were strengthened by requiring prior review of related-party transactions by an external auditor. In addition, resolving insolvency is now easier thanks to the establishment of a framework for electronic auctions of debtors’ assets, streamlining and tightening the time frames for insolvency proceedings and the appeals process, and a framework for out-of-court restructurings.

Source: World Bank