The FINANCIAL — In the past year, the Russian Federation made it easier for local entrepreneurs to do business by implementing regulatory reforms in the areas of starting a business and registering property, a new World Bank Group report finds.
Doing Business 2015: Going Beyond Efficiency finds that in the past year, the Russian Federation made it easier for entrepreneurs to open a new business by eliminating the requirement to deposit the charter capital before company registration as well as the requirement to notify tax authorities of the opening of a bank account. In addition, the country made transferring property easier by eliminating the requirement for notarization and introducing tighter time limits for completing the property registration. Such efforts have contributed to making Europe and Central Asia the second most business-friendly region after high-income economies in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The Russian Federation ranks among the top 20 economies globally on two indicators: the ease of registering property and the ease of enforcing contracts. Obstacles remain in some areas measured by the report, however: entrepreneurs seeking to obtain an electricity connection or to import or export goods face considerable delays compared with global averages, according to the World Bank Group.
“The business regulatory environment requires strong and sustained actions across all areas covered by the report as well as those not directly measured,” said Michal Rutkowski, World Bank Country Director for the Russian Federation . “It is encouraging that the Russian Federation continues its upward trajectory in improving the investment climate thanks to the implementation of regulatory reforms; however, a broader approach should be taken in the coming years to ease the burden for local entrepreneurs,” Rutkowski added.
This year, for the first time, Doing Business collected data for a second city in economies with a population of more than 100 million. In the Russian Federation, the report now analyzes business regulations in St. Petersburg as well as Moscow. The data show that regulatory quality and efficiency are comparable in the two cities, with Moscow and St. Petersburg sharing similar laws and similar times, costs, and procedures for regulatory processes across the areas measured by the report.
The report this year expands the data for three of the 10 topics covered, and there are plans to do so for five more topics next year. In addition, the ease of doing business ranking is now based on the distance to frontier score. This measure shows how close each economy is to global best practices in business regulation. A higher score indicates a more efficient business environment and stronger legal institutions.
The report finds that Singapore tops the global ranking on the ease of doing business. Joining it on the list of the top 10 economies with the most business-friendly regulatory environments are New Zealand; Hong Kong SAR, China; Denmark; the Republic of Korea; Norway; the United States; the United Kingdom; Finland; and Australia.
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