The Best Countries to Do Business in 2012

According to data collected by the World Bank, Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand are the best countries to do business in 2012.

The Doing Business 2012 report ranks 183 economies according to the ease of doing business, an index combining 11 areas including starting a business,  getting credit, paying taxes, protecting investors, enforcing contracts, trading across borders and 5 more.

Interestingly, USA does not belong to the top 3 performers and many other Western economies are outperformed by emerging ones.  A good example is Korea which ranks 8^th mainly due to the ease of starting a new venture, which takes in Korea only 5 procedures, 7 days and 14.6% of annual income per capita with no minimum capital requirement.

In terms of individual indicators many growth economies appear to be best achievers. For instance, South Africa and Malaysia are top 1 in getting credit (next to UK); getting a construction permit is the easiest in Hong Kong; registering property is the easiest in Saudi Arabia and Georgia, and Korea is the second in enforcing contracts after Luxembourg.

There are performance variations within the set of indicators in each individual country, reflecting the government’s priority setting in terms of business regulation.

Significant regulatory improvements have been achieved since last year, the report says. Overall, 245 business regulatory reforms have been implemented. The reforms improved the country performance on three or more indicators in thirty economies. Leader in achieved progress is Morocco which has eased the construction permitting process and the administrative burden of tax compliance and improved the protection of minority shareholders. China, India and the Russian Federation are among the 30 economies that improved most next to Moldova, Latvia, Armenia, Macedonia, Colombia, Sierra Leone and others.

To access the original Doing Business 2012 report, please go down the page or visit the official Doing Business website.

An infographic with the major results is presented below.

The Best Countries to Do Business in 2012 (The Report)