According to the latest report of World Bank, in the Mena Region, UAE is still the best place to do business. The UAE has introduced four new reforms in the recent 12 months.
As World Bank has said, the UAE has introduced business regulatory reforms that serve as inspiration.
It should be said that in the 2020 report of World Bank’s Doing Business, the ranking of the UAE has dropped to 16th position. Despite the drop, the UAE is still the best country to do business in comparison to Germany, Finland, Canada, Japan, Ireland, Switzerland and a number of other developed countries.
It is interesting to note that the UAE has introduced four new reforms during the past year about a starting a business. The reforms also are about protecting minority investors and cross-border trading in order to make doing business easier in the country, deal with construction permits. The UAE is now among those 115 countries where doing business is easy in. Totally, the report has assessed 190 economies worldwide.
World Bank has said that there has been a steady rise on business regulatory reforms in the Gulf economies. This is mainly caused by some factors such as the immediate need for economic diversification. After the UAE, the most improved economy to do business in 2020 is Saudi Arabia. To be more precise, this country has had a total of eight reforms.
One of those reforms introduced by the UAE was to make starting a business less expensive. In fact, the UAE decreased the fee for business incorporation. In addition, the UAE used a risk-based approach in order to decrease the number of inspections. As a result, dealing with construction permits became easier.
In the region, there were other countries that introduced some reforms. These countries include Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait. All of these countries were ranked among top 10 improvers.
As said earlier, Saudi Arabia has been the most improved economy in the world with 8 reforms in the last 12 months. This was the reason why its ranking got better from 92 to 62. Similarly, Bahrain jumped from 62 to 43 ranking. Also, Kuwait rose from 97th position to 83rd.
In the region, the UAE was followed by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Qatar and Kuwait.
Ferid Belhaj, regional vice-president for Mena at World Bank, believes that this year has been a year of records for Mana region’s economies. He has said that the next things to focus on should be fair competition, transparency and good governance with the goal of making Mena a good place to do business. This will attract investments and will create jobs for women and youth.
In the world, in terms of ease of doing business, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Denmark, South Korea, US, Georgia, UK, Norway, and Sweden score the highest.
*The information above is based on the recent report of Khaleej Times website.