S’pore remains world’s most business-friendly economy: World Bank

WASHINGTON — Singapore remains the most business-friendly economy in the world, topping a World Bank ranking for a ninth consecutive year.

The Republic ranked No 1 in the ‘trading across borders’ and ‘enforcing contracts’ categories in the institution’s 2015 Doing Business report. It was second in the category of ‘dealing with construction permits’, third in ‘protecting minority investors’ and sixth in ‘starting a business’.

In the ‘trading across borders’ category, countries were assessed based on the number of documents, time and cost per container required for trade facilitation. In the ‘enforcing contracts’ category, the World Bank noted that Singapore had made the process easier by introducing an electronic litigation system to streamline proceedings.

But the Republic did not fare as well in the ‘getting credit’ (17th), ‘resolving insolvency’ (19th) and ‘registering property’ (24th) categories.

New Zealand came in second while Hong Kong was third, followed by Denmark and South Korea in the top five.

Ms Selena Ling, head of treasury research and strategy at OCBC Bank, noted that Singapore’s score slipped marginally from 88.30 for 2014 to 88.27 in 2015, while the other top five ranked economies saw improvements in their scoring. “Looking ahead, keeping (Singapore) ahead may require pulling up the socks for lagging categories like ‘resolving insolvency’,” she said.

The World Bank said that, globally, it was easier to do business this year than it was last year.

“We see that the economies that score the lowest are reforming more intensely, so they are converging towards the economies that do the best,” said Ms Rita Ramalho, manager of the report.

Sub-Saharan African countries had the most number of regulatory reforms at 75, while emerging Europe and Central Asia had the highest percentage of improving countries.

This year’s report uses new data in three categories: Resolving insolvency, protecting minority investors and getting credit. It measures the ease of doing business in 189 economies based on 11 categories.