Having lived in different countries, I realized there are significant regulatory and structural differences among countries, apart from cultural ones of course. These differences can make things easier or harder in your day-to-day life. For instance, opening a bank account is a laborious task that takes a whole day in some countries while it is a piece of cake that only takes 5 minutes in others. When it comes to setting up your own business, you obviously want to choose an easier place to avoid troubles. The visual content above reveals the world’s easiest countries to start a business based on Ease of Doing Business rankings of the World Bank.
Scores Given for 10 Doing Business Topics
The report ranks 190 countries by measuring an country’s performance with respect to a measure of regulatory best practice across the entire sample of 41 indicators for 10 Doing Business topics. The topics include: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency. It also classifies the country’s income per capita into four ranges: high, upper middle, lower middle, and low.
The Higher the Income, the Easier — Except Rwanda
Looking into the top 90 countries by income, there exists a correlation between ease of doing business and the income level of a country. You guessed it right; the higher the income, the easier the business. But with an exception: Rwanda. Rwanda appears at 38th, ranked relatively higher compared to other low income countries. Then what pushed this country up? Rwanda achieved extremely high positions in the topics of ‘registering property (3rd)’ and ‘getting credit (4th).’ In other words, it is quite easy to register property and get credit in Rwanda.
Islands: Having Higher Income but Hard on Business
On the other hand there are odd ones out in the bottom 100 countries, that have high income but are hard to do a business: Palau, St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Seychelles, and San Marino. Why are they ranked at the bottom despite the wealth? We may be able to attribute this to their market size. That is to say, most of them are small islands with small populations. Uruguay and San Marino are not islands but both have small populations. Having a small market could hinder the country’s regulatory and structural development to make the country attractive for entrepreneurs who would be already seeing less potential customers in the smaller market.
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InsightsArtist’s previous visual content summarized Forbes rankings on the same topic. It may be interesting to know how Forbes ranked countries:
