Singapore Ranked As World’s Best Place To Run A Business For 8th Straight Year
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Singapore has once again come out top as the world’s best place to run a business, according to the World Bank’s annual competiveness survey, with the Ukraine showing the highest levels of improvement, while Russia made the most progress among the BRICS.
Singapore has once again come out top as the world’s best place to run a business, according to the World Bank’s annual competiveness survey, with the Ukraine showing the highest levels of improvement, while Russia made the most progress among the BRICS.
The World Bank’s Doing Business Report gave Singapore top marks for nearly every category in their Ease of Doing Business index, with only two criteria (enforcing contracts and registering property) seeing Singapore rank outside the top ten in their individual category.
Furthermore, Singapore showed a significant improvement, through reforms, in at least two categories, giving them the top spot on the World Bank’s list for the 8th straight year.
Coming in behind Singapore were Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United States and Denmark. Malaysia made the top ten ranking for the first time in its history, jumping from 12th to 6th. Rounding out the top ten were South Korea, Georgia, Norway and the United Kingdom.
The lower ranks of the 189-country list was populated with African countries like Chad, the Central African Republic and Libya. Myanmar, despite recent political reforms, remained rooted at 182nd spot.
Meanwhile China fell five spots this year from 91st to 96th. In the past, China has pressured the World Bank to drop the 11-year-old study, claiming the Bank utilised “wrong methodologies” to rate them, leading to a poor score for the world’s second largest economy.
Related: China Pressuring World Bank Into Watering Down Key Report: FT
Related: Will Slowing Investment Drag China’s Reform Efforts?: Michael Pettis
Augusto Lopez-Claros, director of the World Bank’s global indicators, though insisted that support for the report remained “overwhelming”, while the bank’s ultimate goal was not to disparage countries, but rather to encourage governments towards emulating the best practices in the world, such as in Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
“The World Bank decided to continue with the rankings because there is really overwhelming support for them in the world,” said Lopez-Claros, as cited by Reuters.
[quote]”I would just like to underscore … this effort we’re making quite deliberately is to de-emphasize the rankings and move to measures of overall improvement,” he said.[/quote]The top ten most improved economies were Ukraine, Rwanda, the Russian Federation, the Philippines, Kosovo, Djibouti, Côte d’Ivoire, Burundi, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Guatemala. Yet challenges persist: Five of this year’s top improvers — Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, the Philippines and Ukraine — are still in the bottom half of the global ranking.
Related: The 10 Most Competitive Economies In The World For 2013
Responding to the criticism of the report’s methodologies, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that he would continually work on improving the report, which he called “an important catalyst in driving reforms around the world.”
Kim appointed an independent panel last year to review the report following serious criticism. The panel, headed by South Africa’s planning minister Trevor Manuel, said in June that the bank should scrap the headline rankings altogether, and instead provide scores for various indicators.
But Kim said he would keep the rankings anyway since they help countries improve their business climates.
Find Out Where Your Country Ranks In This Year’s World Bank Doing Business Report
Source: World Bank
