Romania ranks 72nd in the world for ease of doing business, start up legislation simplified
2012-10-23 17:17:01
Romania remained 72 out of 185 countries for the ease of doing business, according to the most recent Doing Business report issued by the World Bank, which assesses the enterprise friendliness of countries around the world.
Regionally, Eastern Europe and Central Asia was the most improved and Romania, like other regional states, also implemented reforms to take the hassle out of starting and running a business. Poland was the most improved country in the rankings, after implementing reforms on registering property, paying taxes, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Romania implemented two reforms to improve the business environment, with headway made in gaining credit and on insolvency issues.
According to the World Bank report, registration procedures for new companies were simplified in Romania during the last year and this added to a steady improvement in the benevolence of the country’s business environment since 2005.
Looking at Romania’s ranking within the different areas studied by the Doing Business report, a wide variety of results are seen. For ease of starting a new business, Romania ranks 68, while for registering property and trading across borders Romania’s rankings are the same as the overall rank – 72. The country ranks 60 for enforcing contracts, but didn’t perform so well for resolving insolvency (102 ), dealing with construction permits (129 ), paying taxes (136 ) or getting electricity (168 ). The country ranked very well for ease of getting credit – number 12 out of the 185 countries, while protection of investors was also judged highly, ranked 49.
At the top of the ranking were Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand. The US was fourth and Denmark was the best placed European country in fifth place. Out of the bottom 15 places, 13 were occupied by African states, with the Venezuela (180 ) and Haiti (174 ) rounding out the world’s most difficult countries in which to do business. Despite improvements, Romania was still among the worst placed EU countries ahead of only Italy (73 ), Greece (78 ) and Malta (102 ). Many Western European countries were in the top 20 and regionally, Estonia (21 ) was the best ranked. Neighboring EU states Hungary and Bulgaria ranked 54 and 66 respectively.