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Taiwan up 15 spots in business ranking

Taiwan ranked 46th worldwide in terms of overall regulatory ease of doing business this year, up 15 places from the previous year, said an annual report released online yesterday by the Washington-headquartered World Bank Group.

The area in which Taiwan made the most significant progress was in the ease of starting a business, which was up 90 notches to No. 29.

The Doing Business 2010 report ranks 183 economies based on 10 indicators of business regulation that record the time and cost of meeting government requirements in starting and operating a business, trading across borders, paying taxes and closing a business.

The report identifies a total of 287 reforms between June last year and May this year that made it easier to do business in 131 economies. The rankings do not reflect macroeconomic policy, infrastructure, workforce skills or crime rates.

During that period, Taiwan made great improvement in streamlining its lengthy and complex procedures involved in starting a business, which had been one of the most criticized aspects of the country’s business environment, the report said.

The number of steps entrepreneurs can expect to go through to launch a business in Taiwan was reduced from eight to six, with the time it takes on average shortened from 43 days to 23 days.

The cost and minimum capital required as a percentage of gross national income per capita, meanwhile, was lowered from 4.1 percent to 3.9 percent.

In term of the ease of paying taxes, Taiwan’s ranking was up 10 places to No. 92.

The number of payments an entrepreneur must make in a given year was lessened from 23 to 18 and the number of hours spent preparing, filing and paying taxes was reduced from 340 to 281.

Other areas in which reforms were made are the ease of employing workers, where the country’s ranking was up five places to No. 153, and the ease of trading across borders, which is up one position to No. 33.

Among Asia’s four little dragons, however, Taiwan’s ranking remained the lowest, still lagging far behind Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.

Singapore leads the global rankings for the fourth consecutive year, while Hong Kong and South Korea ranked No. 3 and No. 19 respectively.

Rounding out the top 10 are New Zealand, Hong Kong, the US, the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Canada, Australia and Norway.

The rankings of most large economies were little changed from a year earlier with Japan at No. 15, Germany at No. 25, China at No. 89 and Russia at No. 120.

In the report, the bank highlighted how the top-ranked countries are increasingly providing business services over the Internet, such as tax payment, property registration and construction permits.

“Singapore has put a lot of emphasis on implementing e-­government initiatives, making everything as transparent, easy and efficient as possible for local businesses,” said Sylvia Solf, director of the report.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AP
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