Doing Business in 2006 – India is not all that good a destination
++ Imagine having a company in Sierra Leone where if you paid all your business taxes, it would eat up 164 percent of your company’s gross profit.
++ Or imagine being in Syria, where you’re expected to put up at least US$61,000 in capital – 51 times the average annual income – to register a business.
++ Perhaps try Mozambique – where an entrepreneur must go through 14 separate procedures over 153 days to register a new business.
++ In Lao PDR, the start-up procedures take 198 days.
++ By contrast, in Australia it takes 2 days.
This is what the latest report “doing Business in 2006 – Creating Jobs” says. The report is from the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC),
We believe that we have done a lot of liberalization, but that is not what the World Bank survey shows.
Sri Lanka ranks above India and China as an easier place to do business, but it trails behind other South Asian countries with its rigid labour regulations.
Sri Lanka ranks 75 ahead of competitors such as India at 116 and China at 91 on overall ease of doing business. But South Asian countries like the Maldives are way ahead.
Maldives ranks 31, Nepal at 55, Pakistan at 60, followed by Sri Lanka at 75, Bhutan at 104, India 116, and Afghanistan at 122. Pakistan is also among the top ten reformers.
It takes 50 days and eight procedures to start a business in Sri Lanka, compared to 12 days and 6 procedures in Maldives and on the other end, 71 days, 11 procedures in India.
The report tracks indicators related to business startups, operation, trade, payment of taxes and closure, measuring the time and costs involved.
Pakistan was the top reformer in the South Asian region, making it easier to start a business, reducing the cost to register property and replacing a requirement to license every shipment with a two year license for traders.
India ranks behind all South Asian countries, except Afghanistan, in the overall ease of doing business.
It took 11 procedures, 71 days and cost 61.7% of per capita income on an average for starting a business in India in January 2005, according to the report. In Pakistan, someone starting a business also had to face 11 procedures, but it took him 24 days and 18.6% of the per capita income to do that.
The top 30 economies in the world in terms of the report's ease-of-doing-business index, in order, are New Zealand, Singapore, the United States, Canada, Norway, Australia, Hong Kong, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Japan, Ireland, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Thailand, Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Mauritius, the Netherlands, Chile, Latvia, Korea, South Africa, Israel, and Spain.