Korea Ranks 30th in Business Friendliness

Korea ranked 30th on the list of “business-friendly countries” of the world this year, down seven notches from last year.

On the “Doing Business 2008” report released by the World Bank on September 26, Korea took 30th place among 178 countries on the list of “business-friendly countries,” suggesting that the county’s deregulation efforts are not sufficient. Korea ranked 23rd on the same report for 2007 and 27th on the one for 2006.

Singapore topped the list for two years in a row, followed by New Zealand, the U.S., Hong Kong and Denmark.

While Korea was slowly moving toward deregulation, countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa have made their way to higher rankings, including Georgia (37th to 18th), Latvia (24th to 22nd), Saudi Arabia (38th to 23rd), and Mauritius (32nd to 27th).

In Asia, China (93rd to 83rd), India (134th to 120th) and Vietnam (104th to 91st) have seen much progress thanks to their continued efforts to ease regulations.

Egypt, selected as the best regulation reformer, has halved the time and money needed to establish a business. It has also significantly reduced the bank deposit required for business registration from $8,990 to $180, jumping from the 165th to 126th place.

The World Bank said in the report, “Eastern Europe and former Soviet countries are creating a new economic boom with sweeping regulation reform. Return on investment was also higher in countries which conduct bold regulation reform.”

The report took account of the rankings of 178 countries in 10 areas of regulation, including starting a business, licensing and permission, employment, bank loans, and investor protections for one year since the second half of 2006. It disclosed rankings of each of the areas and overall rankings.

ecolee@donga.com