Developing economies quickened the pace of their business reforms during the last 12 months to make it easier for local businesses to start and operate, says the World Bank Group's annual ease of doing business measurement.
Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency finds that 85 developing economies implemented 169 business reforms during the past year, compared with 154 reforms the previous year. High-income economies carried out an additional 62 reforms, bringing the total for the past year to 231 reforms in 122 economies around the world.
The majority of the new reforms during the past year were designed to improve the efficiency of regulations, by reducing their cost and complexity, with the largest number of improvements made in the area of Starting a Business, which measures how long it takes to obtain a permit for starting a business and its associated processing costs. A total of 45 economies, 33 of which were developing economies, undertook reforms to make it easier for entrepreneurs to start a business. India, for example, made significant improvements by eliminating the minimum capital requirement and a business operations certificate, saving entrepreneurs an unnecessary procedure and five days' wait time. Kenya also made business incorporation easier by simplifying pre-registration procedures, reducing the time to incorporate by four days.
Efforts to strengthen legal institutions and frameworks were less common, with 66 reforms implemented in 53 economies during the past year. The largest number of such reforms were carried out in the area of Getting Credit, with 32 improvements, of which nearly half were undertaken in Sub-Saharan Africa.
"A modern economy cannot function without regulation and, at the same time, it can be brought to a standstill through poor and cumbersome regulation. The challenge of development is to tread this narrow path by identifying regulations that are good and necessary, and shunning ones that thwart creativity and hamper the functioning of small and medium enterprises. The World Bank Group's Doing Business report tracks the regulatory and bureaucratic systems of nations by conducting detailed annual surveys. For policymakers faced with the challenge of creating jobs and promoting development, it is well worth studying how nations fare in terms of the various Doing Business indicators," said Kaushik Basu, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President.
