Saudi is Gulf leader in 'ease of business' survey

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have ranked among the top 25 countries for ease of doing business in the world.

Business in the Middle East and North Africa continues to ease the regulatory burden of doing business according to a new report, Doing Business in 2009, by the IFC and the World Bank.

For a third time, the report ranked Egypt as one of the top 10 economies that reformed their business regulations, while Saudi Arabia and Bahrain ranked 16th and 18th respectively.

“Economies worldwide are increasingly committed to regulatory reforms, and this is evident in the Middle East and North Africa, the region with the second-largest share of economies that made it easier to do business,” said Dahlia Khalifa, a coauthor of the report.

“Many economies, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are consistently making improvements and are advancing in the global rankings. Across the region, countries are making it easier to do business by looking to early pacesetters for ideas on how to reform.”

In two-thirds of the region’s economies, the report records 27 reforms between June 2007 and June 2008 that make it easier to do business.

Saudi Arabia, a top regional reformer, made it easier to start up a business by continuing to sim­plify formalities for commercial registration and reducing registration fees by 80% said the report. The amount of time to start a business also fell by three days.

The region’s most popular area for reform is business start-up, with nine economies making improvements.

The next most popular area of reform was credit bureau enhancements that improve access to credit in which the UAE (46th overall) rated highly.

Singapore tops the global rankings on the overall regulatory ease of doing business for a third consecutive year. New Zealand is runner-up, with the US third.

This year’s report covered Bahrain and Qatar (37th overall) for the first time.