Romania Outrun By Botswana In World Bank’s Ease Of Doing Business Top

In World Bank’s latest report released Wednesday, Singapore ranks first, New Zeeland is on the second position, followed by Hong Kong, USA and the United Kingdom.

Romania is outran both by some central and Eastern European countries such as Slovakia, ranked 42nd, Bulgaria, 44th, or Hungary, 47th, and also by less developed countries such as Azerbaijan, 38th, or Botswana, 45th.

In the previous Doing Business report, Romania ranked 45th.

Between 2008 and 2009, Romania made several reforms, but only the registering property reform made it easier to do business, thus Romania ranking 92nd in the World Bank’s classification.

On the other hand, Romania made three reforms making it more difficult to do business, namely for paying taxes, ranking 149th, dealing with construction permits, and closing a business, in both cases ranking 91st.

„Romania made it more difficult to go through insolvency procedures by increasing the cost. A November 2008 amendment to its insolvency law requires 1.5% of the amount recovered from each insolvency procedure to go to a fund for reimbursing the expenses of insolvency administrators. The aim is to ensure that insolvency administrators are paid even when debtors have no assets. This reform reduces the amount creditors recover in cases where the company has assets and increases inefficiency in cases where few or no assets are available. Other economies seek to handle this problem by limiting professional intervention where the possibilities of recovery are slim,” the report read.

Hence, Romania ranked in the first half of the top as regards starting a business, 42nd position, protecting investors, 41st position, trading across borders, 46th position, enforcing contracts, 55th place, and getting credit, 15th place.

On the other hand, Romania ranks 113th in the employing workers sector.

The World Bank’s „Doing Business” report covers 183 economies and the data in it are current as of June 1, 2009.

The report measures regulations affecting ten stages of the life of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business.