Adventurers interested in starting a business abroad may find a new report by the World Bank helpful. Called Doing Business 2014: Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises, the new report assesses current regulations in 189 countries and ranks the economies in 10 areas of business regulation.
We’ve found the World Bank’s annual Ease of Doing Business and Ease of Starting a Business reports essential information for our Starting a Business sub-section under Work in each of our Country Guides.
The good news is that about 60 percent of all the countries in the report implemented new regulatory reforms this past year, making it easier to do business. That’s about 18 percent more reforms than the previous year.
Singapore topped the global ranking on ease of doing business, followed by these other business-friendly countries in descending order: Hong Kong (China), China, New Zealand, the United States, Denmark, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Georgia, Norway and the United Kingdom.
We cover new business opportunities in Singapore, China/Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, currently. We’ll be adding Denmark and Norway soon.
The report also finds that since 2009, 92 percent of economies in Europe and Central Asia have improved their process for starting a business, a higher share than any other region. That makes these regions the easiest for business entry, ahead of the high-income economies of the 34-member Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The reports says that 73 percent of the countries in these two regions reformed how they handle insolvency proceedings and 85 percent made it easier to pay taxes.
About one-third of you are budding entrepreneurs looking for business opportunities abroad. Whenever we can find new studies and information that will help you plan for your start-up abroad, we’ll bring them to you.
You should also read what emerging-market expert Steven Koltai has to say about starting your own business in another country in our article “Entrepreneurial Opportunities Abroad.”
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