Singapore still most business friendly

Singapore has been crowned the most business-friendly economy in the world for the ninth year in a row.

According to a recent World Bank report, Singapore's regulatory environment is highly beneficial for entrepreneurs.

The report studied the ease of doing business in 189 economies based on 11 hurdles to clear, including starting a firm, getting credit and electricity and trading across borders.

By those measures, Singapore led the pack with a score of 88.27, with New Zealand close behind with 86.91.

The rest of the top 10 was made up of Hong Kong in third place, followed by Denmark, South Korea, Norway, the United States, Britain, Finland and Australia.

Entrepreneurs in Singapore need an average of two and a half days to set up a company, while in Eritrea - the economy that came lowest in the rankings - investors usually need about 84 days, according to the report.

Still, the World Bank report cautioned against viewing the rankings as "an all-encompassing measure of an economy's goodness".

It "measures a slender segment of the complex organism that any modern economy is," said Kaushik Basu, World Bank senior vice-president and chief economist, in a foreword to the report.

"Economic efficiency is not the only measure by which we evaluate an economy's performance," he added. "An economy can do poorly on indicators but do well in macroeconomic policy or social welfare interventions."

While the report "suggests that Singapore will keep its competitive edge, it will need to brace itself for slower growth next year, being one of the most open and trade-oriented economies", said IG market strategist Ryan Huang.

Although Singapore stayed in pole position, it slipped slightly in terms of its score from last year, while the other top five economies saw improvements, noted OCBC economist Selena Ling.

For instance, Singapore's score for getting credit did not change from last year's survey, "which likely means other countries have improved faster and are catching up in their scoring for this category".

"Keeping ahead may require pulling up (our) socks for the lagging categories," said Ling.

Contact the writer at chiaym@sph.com.sg

The Straits TimesAsia News Network

(China Daily 11/10/2014 page39)