A Look into Doing Business Reforms

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• A Look into Doing Business Reforms
• 20 June, 2008
• Belgrade

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Doing Business Reform

• Promoting Private Sector Development (PSD)
• Benchmarking reformers
• Monitoring reform progress
• Inspiring healthy constructive competition
• Sharing experiences learning from others
• Recognizing celebrating reformers

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What Reformers Say (1)

• What I like about Doing Business is that it
  creates a forum for exchanging knowledge. Its no
  exaggeration when I say I checked the top ten in
  every indicator and we just asked them What did
  you do? If there is any advantage to starting
  late in anything, its that you can learn from
  others.
• Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, Egypts Minister of
  Investment, and Doing Business 2008 top reformer

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What the Reformers Say (2)

• We have organized our reform agenda around the
  ten topics in doing business. Of course, we have
  broader reforms too. But even there it is useful
  to follow simple measures and this is what Doing
  Business has taught us.
• Georgias Minister of Economic Development,
  Ekaterina Sharashidze

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Why Improving DB environment?

• Create new firms
• Generate new jobs
• Reduce corruption
• Maintain legal certainty

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Gain momentum - some results show quickly

• Increase in new business registration after
  reform ()

After reform
Before reform
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Starting a Business Top 10

• Top 10 common factors
• No Minimum paid in capital
• Average no. of procedures is 4
• Average no. of days is 8
• Average cost is 1.5 ( GNI per capita)

• Australia
• Canada
• New Zealand
• United States
• Ireland
• United Kingdom
• Puerto Rico
• Mauritius (newcomer)
• Singapore
• Georgia (newcomer)

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OECD countries Best Performers
Average rank, ease of doing business
South Asia
Sub Saharan Africa
Middle East North Africa
Latin America Caribbean
East Asia Pacific
Eastern Europe Central Asia
High income OECD
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Eastern Europe Central Asia Best Reformers
Time (days) to start a business
2003
2007
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ECRF countries in DB ranking
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ECRF countries Common Practices

• Minimum paid in capital
• Criminal record
• Court registration
• Publication
• Accounting books
• Business license

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DB Best Practices

• Single access point- most popular reform
• Standardized Articles of Association the new
  trend
• Elimination of outdated formalities minimum
  capital, publication, seal.
• Electronic registering Most effective reform

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Best practices standardized forms

• Standardize forms and articles of association
• Improves quality of received applications
• Speeds up processing of registrations
• Can make notaries optional cut cost
• Who has done it? Portugal, Estonia, Ireland,

Time to register a company (days)
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Effective Reform Abolish Minimum paid-in
capital

• Reduce or eliminate paid-in minimum capital
  requirement
• 15 countries reformed since 2003 Bosnia,
  Cambodia, Egypt, China, Finland, France, Georgia,
  Japan, Lao PDR, Macedonia FYR, Madagascar,
  Micronesia, Morocco, Serbia, Tunisia (9 were top
  reformers)
• 77 countries have no or nominal minimum capital
  requirements

Minimum capital requirement ( of GNI per capita)
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• THANK YOU!
• For more information, please visit our website
• www.doingbusiness.org
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