…on par with war-torn Pakistan, Tanzania

Guyana has dropped several places on the international scene, when it comes to the ease of doing business. The country currently ranks in the same region as war-torn Pakistan and Tanzania, according to the 2016 World Bank’s Report.
The recently released report rated 189 countries across the world, with Singapore proving to be the most relaxed, scoring 87 points on the World Bank index.

GUYANA SCORED 52

The country did pick up favourable remarks for establishing its Credit Bureau in May last year.
Guyana was also flagged by the international report as being among the countries where entrepreneurs would have to resort to hiring an attorney for its business registration.
According to the World Bank, “among regions, Latin America and the Caribbean has the largest share of economies where entrepreneurs hire lawyers for company registration…It also has the highest average cost of doing so, with fees ranging from roughly US$70 in Guyana.”
This represents the sixth consecutive year that Guyana’s ranking on the international business index has plummeted.
Four of the top five ranked economies remained in the Asia Pacific region.
Brunei, Costa Rica and Kenya each moved up 21 positions, the most; Albania declined 35 positions, the worst in the 2016 report.
Since its launch in 2002, the Doing Business project has aimed to provide objective measures of the regulatory environment applicable to the life cycle of a typical small- and medium-size company. A higher ranking confers a more conductive business climate to local entrepreneurs.
The news comes on the heels of the Guyana Financial Mid-Year Report.
Kaushik Basu senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank, in providing an overview of the report said that a quick look at the list of economies at the top with the ease of doing business reveals that the best 30 performers are not those with little regulation but those with good rules that allow efficient and transparent functioning of businesses and markets while protecting the public interest.
Guyana has over the years also been ranked poorly on the annual Transparency International Corruption perception Index. Basu in the 2016 World Bank report noted too that the data in this year’s report also show that economies that have efficient regulatory processes as measured by Doing Business have high regulatory quality.
In addition, the economies that rank high on Doing Business indicators tend to perform well in other international data sets, such as the Global Competitiveness Index and Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.