ARMENIA PLACED 44TH AMONG 181 COUNTRIES IN WORLD BANK’S RANKING
ARKA
Sep 11, 2008
YEREVAN, September 11. /ARKA/. Armenia ranked 44th among 181 countries
in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2009 report, compared to 41 among
178 economies last year, the WB Yerevan office reports.
The report says that throughout the year, Armenia reorganized its
court system and overhauled the procedural code. New requirements to
frontload evidence eased contract enforcement, removing one procedure
and reducing the time required to resolve commercial disputes.
Armenia also significantly reduced the cost to obtain construction
permits in Yerevan by abolishing "mandatory charitable contributions"
paid to obtain the right to design. "However, despite these steps,
Armenia’s ranking in some critical areas of the business environment,
such as the ease of paying taxes and trading across borders, remained
very low, highlighting the importance of pursuing reforms ambitiously
so as to strengthen Armenia’s competitiveness and attractiveness to
investment", mentioned Aristomene Varoudakis, Armenia Country Manager,
the World Bank.
Doing Business 2009, the sixth in an annual series of reports published
by IFC and the World Bank, says between June 2007 and June 2008, 23
of the region’s 25 countries implemented 62 regulatory reforms that
make it easier to do business – over 25 percent of the 239 reforms
identified worldwide.
Doing Business ranks economies based on 10 indicators of business
regulation. Doing Business provides a quantitative measure of
regulations for starting a business, dealing with construction
permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit,
protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing
contracts and closing a business – as they apply to domestic small
and medium-size enterprises.
Doing Business 2009 ranks 181 economies on the overall ease of
doing business. The top 25 are, in order, Singapore, New Zealand,
the United States, Hong Kong (China), Denmark, the United Kingdom,
Ireland, Canada, Australia, Norway, Iceland, Japan, Thailand, Finland,
Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Bahrain, Belgium, Malaysia, Switzerland,
Estonia, Korea, Mauritius, and Germany.-0-