Small Is Beautiful for Business
The World Bank says New Zealand is the easiest place to do business. How did Asia's financial hubs fare?
New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark are the three nations where it is easiest to do business, according to the World Bank's 15th Doing Business report: Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs. The report uncovers red tape and roadblocks for small and medium-sized businesses on topics such as starting a company, trading across borders, paying taxes, resolving insolvency, and getting electricity.
The Smaller the Better
The top three are all small nations with populations of less than six million inhabitants. They retained their first, second and third spots from last year. Asia is home to three of the world’s top 10-ranked economies, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.
The region is also represented by China and two of this year’s top 10 improvers, Brunei and Thailand. In the past 15 years, the region has implemented 371 reforms. As a result, the time needed to start a new business has been more than halved to 24 days from 50 days in 2003.
The Trump Bump
The U.S. ranked sixth in the report. President Donald Trump has said he wants to reform the tax system and pushes for deregulation aimed at reducing the burden on businesses. The country overtook the U.K. and Norway to move up from eighth in last year’s report.
The world’s most crisis-stricken economies are also the most difficult in which to carry out business. Somalia is the hardest place in the world to conduct business, below Eritrea, Venezuela, South Sudan and Yemen.
