East Asia and Pacific is home to two of the world’s top 10 ranked economies, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR (China,) and two of this year’s top 10 improvers, Brunei Darussalam (for a second consecutive year) and Thailand, announced Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs, the 15th edition in the report series, on October 31st.
The region’s lowest ranked economies are Myanmar (171) and Timor-Leste (178). Other large economies and their rankings are China (78), Indonesia (72), Japan (34), Malaysia (24), the Philippines (113), Thailand (26) and Vietnam (68).
Thailand also adopted eight reforms in the past year, a record for the country in a single year. Starting a business was made easier by abolishing a requirement to obtain a company’s seal and eliminating the need for approval of company work regulations from the Labor Department. As a result, the time taken to start a business has been reduced to just 4.5 days, compared to 27.5 days previously.
The region’s economies perform well in the Doing Business areas of Dealing with Construction Permits and Getting Electricity. Building a warehouse, for example, takes on average 138 days and costs 2.2 percent of the warehouse value, compared with the global averages of 158 days and 5.3 percent of the warehouse value.
Highlights of the region’s successes over the past 15 years include:
* Starting a Business has been the most common area of reform, with 74 of the 371 reforms of the past 15 years aimed at making it easier for entrepreneurs to register a new business. As a result, the average cost to start a business in the East Asia and Pacific region has dropped to 19 percent of income per capita, from 59 percent in 2003.
* The region has implemented 17 reforms in the area of Resolving Insolvency over the past 15 years. Thanks to these reforms the average recovery rate has increased from 28.8 percent in 2003 to 37.3 today.
• Vietnam and Indonesia have implemented the most reforms in the past 15 years, with 39 reforms each. Today, an entrepreneur in Southern hub Ho Chi Minh city spends 22 days and 6.5 percent income per capita registering a new company, compared to 61 days and 31.9 percent in 2003. In Jakarta, the average recovery rate for resolving insolvency today is 64.3 cents on the dollar, compared to 9.9 cents in 2003.
“In the past 15 years, the East Asia and Pacific region has made significant progress in enabling entrepreneurship. As the reform momentum continues building up in the region, those economies which lag behind have the opportunity to learn from the good practices adopted by their neighbors,” said Ms Rita Ramalho, Acting Director of the World Bank’s Global Indicators Group, which produces the report./.