Taiwan ranked 33rd in the World Bank’s latest business environment rating, up 13 notches from last year, a rise the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) attributed to greater ease in starting a business.
“Taiwan advanced substantially in the category of ‘starting a business’ this year,” Council for Economic Planning and Development Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) told a press briefing yesterday, saying that the Ministry of Economic Affairs has streamlined the registration procedures for setting up a company.
Liu was pleased with Taiwan’s progress in the Doing Business 2011 report, but she warned that there was still room for improvement becaue the bank changed the criteria it used to produce the report this year.
This year’s report did not include the “employing workers” category, in which the nation fared poorly last year, placing 153rd and dragging down its overall ranking to 46th.
In the revised rankings for last year, excluding the “employing workers” category, Taiwan stood at 34th.
“We cannot feel complacent about this year’s progress. We need to work harder and continue to forge ahead,” Liu said.
The World Bank compared the business environment in 183 economies in nine different categories — starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business.
The Doing Business 2011 report said Taiwan has carried out regulatory reforms in the past year that have made it easier to start and operate a business, with the nation ranking 24th in the -category from a revised 28th place last year.
Liu said many international enterprises regard the World Bank’s business environment report as a key index when making foreign investments and that global rating institutes also place importance on its risk assessments of economies.
Taiwan also saw improvement in two other categories. The nation ranked 87th, up from last year’s 92nd, in the “paying taxes” category and climbed to 17th from last year’s 33rd in the “trading across borders” category.
“The signing of the ECFA [Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement] with China helped a lot in the nation’s progress in the ‘trading across borders’ category,” Liu said.
Liu said that custom tariff reductions were the key factor.
The government cut its business income tax from a progressive rate of 25 percent to a flat rate of 17 percent earlier this year and simplified online tax payment procedures, leading to the nine-place rise in the “paying taxes” category, she said.
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