Saudi Arabia is among the top 25 countries with a noticeable improvement on the burden of doing business, according to a report by IFC and the World Bank released on Wednesday. In the sixth annual report dubbed “Doing Business 2009” the IFC and the World Bank said that out of record 27 reforms between June 2007 and June 2008 that make it easier to do business, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain rank among the top 25 worldwide. For a third time, Egypt is one of the top 10 economies that reformed their business regulations, the report noted. Egypt, which was the world's top reformer of business regulations last year, continued to lead, with improvements in six of the 10 areas the report covers. Egypt advanced 11 places in the global rankings on the ease of doing business. The region's other leader in reforming regulations is Tunisia, making it easier to do business in four areas. “Economies worldwide are increasingly committed to regulatory reforms, and this is evident in the Middle East and North Africa, the region with the second-largest share of economies that made it easier to do business,” said Dahlia Khalifa, a coauthor of the report. “Many economies, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are consistently making improvements and are advancing in the global rankings. Across the region, countries are making it easier to do business by looking to early pacesetters for ideas on how to reform,” she added. Newcomers to the top 25 this year include Bahrain, which debuted in the Doing Business aggregate rankings at 18. Saudi Arabia advanced to 16. (This year's report covers Bahrain and Qatar for the first time.) “Economies need rules that are efficient, easy to use, and accessible to all who use them. Otherwise, businesses are trapped in the unregulated, informal economy, where they have less access to finance and hire fewer workers, and where workers lack the protection of labor law,” said Michael Klein, World Bank/IFC Vice President for Financial and Private Sector Development. “Doing Business encourages good rules, and good rules are a better basis for healthy business than ‘who you know,'” he added. For a fifth year, the region's most popular area for reform is business start-up, with nine economies making improvements. Yemen implemented one of the boldest reforms, reducing the world's second-highest minimum capital requirement and launching a one-stop shop for business start-ups. The next most popular area for reform, credit bureau enhancements that improve access to credit, saw activity in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and the West Bank and Gaza. Doing Business ranks economies based on 10 indicators of business regulation that record the time and cost to meet government requirements in starting and operating a business, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business. The rankings do not reflect such areas as macroeconomic policy, quality of infrastructure, currency volatility, and investor perceptions, or crime rates. Among regions, Eastern Europe and Central Asia led in reforms of business regulation for a fifth consecutive year, with more than 90 percent of its countries making improvements. And the trend is moving eastward as newcomers join the list of economies making the most reforms: the top 10 are, in order, Azerbaijan, Albania, the Kyrgyz Republic, Belarus, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Egypt. Singapore tops the global rankings on the overall regulatory ease of doing business for a third consecutive year. New Zealand is runner-up, with the United States third. Doing Business 2009 ranks 181 economies on the overall ease of doing business. The top 25 are, in order, Singapore, New Zealand, the United States, Hong Kong (China), Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Norway, Iceland, Japan, Thailand, Finland, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Bahrain, Belgium, Malaysia, Switzerland, Estonia, Korea, Mauritius, and Germany. __
