GENEVA — Apparel exporting nations such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, Peru, Egypt and Mexico were among more than 100 countries that implemented reforms in the last year to reduce the costs of doing business, a World Bank report said.
“Governments worldwide have been consistently taking steps to empower local entrepreneurs,” said Neil Gregory, World Bank acting director for global indicators and analysis. “The economies most affected by the financial crisis have been targeting regulatory reforms over the past year to make it easier for small and medium-size enterprises to recover and create jobs.”
The World Bank report, “Doing Business 2011: Making a Difference for Entrepreneurs,” found that from June 2009 through May 2010, a total of 117 economies out of 183 covered by the study carried out 216 regulatory reforms in an effort to make it easier to start and operate a business.
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The regulations included trading across borders, procedures for starting a business, protecting investors, getting credit and enforcing contracts. The report said impressive gains were posted by Peru, which moved up 10 slots on the global ranking of doing business to 36th, and by Vietnam, which moved up 10 slots to 78th. Vietnam eased company start-ups by creating a one-stop shop for obtaining an operating license and a tax license, and reduced by 50 percent the cost of registering newly completed buildings.
In the past year, Egypt made trading easier by introducing an electronic system for submitting export and import documents. However, some key exporters such as Turkey, Jordan and Indonesia fell behind, as did the world’s biggest exporter, China, which slipped one ranking to 79th.
The report said the costs and time involved in cross-border trading, which includes the number of documents required, the cost levied per 20-foot container and the time to export or import goods, vary widely. For example, the price of exporting a container in China averaged $500; Vietnam, $555; Egypt, $613; Cambodia, $732, and India topped out at $1,055. The time to export goods in Bangladesh averaged 25 days, Cambodia, 22 days; China, 21 days; India, 17 days, and Egypt, 12 days.
In the most efficient cases, it took only five days to exports goods in Singapore and six days in Hong Kong and in the U.S. The cost of exporting a container from Malaysia was $450 and from Singapore, $456. Overall, Singapore is ranked the top nation for the ease of doing business, followed by Hong Kong, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.