IFC finds no major reforms
In the absence of any major regulatory business reforms within the past year Guyana has slipped ten places in the global rankings on the ease of doing business, standing at 105 out of 181 countries.
Though Guyana held steady in a few specific rankings other countries in the region that implemented significant reforms finished strong such as Antigua and Barbuda, which reduced its corporate tax rate from 30% to 25% and ranked 43.
Doing Business ranks countries based on 10 indicators of business regulation that track the time and cost to meet government requirements in starting and operating a business, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business.
The 2009 Doing Business Report released by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on Wednesday stated that regulatory reform across the Caribbean show a positive trend with countries adopting business-friendly reforms; Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Haiti were singled out.
The region’s most popular area for regulatory reform continues to be facilitating trade, followed by changes that make it easier to start a business. There were a string of countries in Latin America and a few in the Caribbean where no major reforms were recorded including Grenada (84), Trinidad and Tobago (80), Suriname (146), St. Kitts and Nevis (67) and St. Lucia (34).
Guyana had ranked 90 overall with respect to starting up a business but this year the country dropped to 100. Challenges in starting up a business locally such as the number of steps entrepreneurs can expect to go through to launch, the time it takes on average, and the cost were among areas highlighted in the 2009 report. Currently there are eight procedures to follow in setting up a business and it takes 40 days on average.
Data in the report pointed also to the tax that a medium-size company must pay or withhold in a given year, and what was referred to as measures of ‘the administrative burden in paying taxes’. These measures include the number of payments an entrepreneur must make; the number of hours spent preparing, filing, and paying; and the percentage of their profits they must pay in taxes. In this area Guyana also dropped a few places going from 104 last year to 108 this year.
Further, the report points to what was termed as weaknesses in existing bankruptcy law and the main procedural and administrative bottlenecks in the bankruptcy process in the country.
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, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Norway, Iceland, Japan, Thailand, Finland, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Bahrain, Belgium, Malaysia, Switzerland, Estonia, South Korea, Mauritius and Germany.
