Hong Kong SAR, China, October 29, 2014—
A new World Bank Group report ranks Hong Kong as the world’s third most business-friendly regulatory environment, after Singapore and New Zealand.
Released today,
Doing Business 2015: Going Beyond Efficiency
finds that between June 2013 and June 2014 Hong Kong strengthened minority investor protection by requiring directors to provide more detailed disclosure of conflicts of interest to other board members. But the territory made starting a business more difficult by increasing the registration fee.
“Hong Kong performs well on protecting minority investors and trading across borders, ranking second in the world in these areas. The city is also the easiest place in the world when it comes to dealing with construction permits,” said Wendy Werner, the World Bank Group’s Trade and Competitiveness Manager in East Asia and the Pacific. “A leading economy like Hong Kong should continue to introduce regulatory reforms to further improve its world-class investment climate.”
The 2015 report’s methodology has been revised and the ease of doing business ranking of 189 economies is calculated based on the distance-to-frontier score, which measures how close an economy is to global best practices in business regulation. A higher score indicates a more efficient business environment and stronger legal institutions, with 100 being a perfect score. Hong Kong’s distance-to-frontier score is 84.97, up from 84.45 last year. In comparison, Singapore’s score this year is 88.27, down from 88.30 last year, and New Zealand’s is 86.91, up from 86.37 last year.
This year’s report, for the first time, collected data for a second city in economies with a population of more than 100 million. In China, the report now analyzes business regulations in Beijing as well as Shanghai; differences between cities are common in indicators measuring the steps, time, and cost to complete regulatory transactions.
The report finds that local entrepreneurs in East Asia and the Pacific continue to see improvements in the business environment, with 24 regulatory reforms
1
implemented by the region’s economies between June 2013 and June 2014.
Many of them also made it easier for businesses to pay taxes; for example, China enhanced its electronic filing and payment system as well as making its business incorporation less expensive.
“Since 2005, the East Asia and the Pacific region has narrowed the gap with global good practices,” said Rita Ramalho, the lead author of the World Bank Group’s
Doing Business
2015
report. “Consistent regulatory reforms have improved the ease of doing business in the region in the past decade and contributed to more business opportunities for local entrepreneurs.”
Among East Asia Pacific economies, Indonesia implemented three regulatory reforms to improve prospects for small enterprises while Vietnam reduced its corporate income tax rate. In Mongolia, local businesses saw the average time needed to pay taxes fall from 192 hours per year in 2013 to 148 hours – less than in Austria.
Rounding out the top 10 economies in this year’s ease of doing business rankings are, in this order, Denmark, the Republic of Korea, Norway, the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Australia.
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1
Reform count excludes Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand, which are classified as OECD high-income economies.
About the Doing Business report series
The annual World Bank Group flagship
Doing Business
report analyzes regulations that apply to an economy’s businesses during their life cycle, including start-up and operations, trading across borders, paying taxes, and resolving insolvency. The aggregate ease of doing business rankings are based on the distance-to-frontier scores for 10 topics and cover 189 economies.
Doing Business
does not measure all aspects of the business environment that matter to firms and investors. For example, it does not measure the quality of fiscal management, other aspects of macroeconomic stability, the level of skills in the labor force, or the resilience of financial systems. Its findings have stimulated policy debates worldwide and enabled a growing body of research on how firm-level regulation relates to economic outcomes across economies. Each year the report team works to improve the methodology and to enhance their data collection, analysis and output. The project has benefited from feedback from many stakeholders over the years. With a key goal to provide an objective basis for understanding and improving the local regulatory environment for business around the world, the project goes through rigorous reviews to ensure its quality and effectiveness. This year’s report marks the 12th edition of the global
Doing Business
report series. For more information about the
Doing Business
reports, please visit doingbusiness.org and join us on doingbusiness.org/Facebook.
About the World Bank Group
The World Bank Group plays a key role in the global effort to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. It consists of five institutions: the World Bank, including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA); the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Working together in more than 100 countries, these institutions provide financing, advice, and other solutions that enable countries to address the most urgent challenges of development. For more information, please visit
www.worldbank.org
,
www.miga.org
, and ifc.org.
Regional Media Contacts:
East Asia and the Pacific
Hannfried von Hindenburg +852 2509-8115 Carl Hanlon +1(202) 473-8087
