Ghana banks |
Ghana’s ranking in ease of doing business has reduced slightly from
112th to 114th in the Doing Business Report, a flagship report of the
World Bank which assesses business regulations and the ease of doing
business in countries.
The report noted that there is a strong association between
performance in the ease of doing business ranking and performance in
other measures of economic competitiveness and quality of government and
governance.
“Economies that rank well on the ease of doing business also score
well on such measures as the Global Competitiveness Index and
Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.”
Ghana’s new rank in the previous year’s report – Doing Business 2015 –
was 112th after the World Bank revised the rankings in accordance with a
change in the methodology of the annual report.
Though Ghana’s overall score in the ranking improved from 57.65 (over
100) in 2015 to 57.69 in 2016, it was offset by good performance in
other countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
On the continent Ghana ranks 10th out of 47 countries.
“Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency”,
the 2016 edition of the report which measures regulations affecting 11
areas in business, exempted the area of labour market
regulation and assessed ten areas: starting a business, dealing with
construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting
credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across
borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency.
Ghana went up two places from 134th to 132nd in the area of dealing
with construction permits, showed stagnation in trading across borders
and exhibited a 2.875 average downward slip in rank over the other eight
categories, ranging from as low as a -1 slip in rank for Enforcing
Contracts and Resolving Insolvency, to a -6 slip in Getting Credit.
According to the report, it takes an average of eight procedures to
register a firm in Ghana, and sub-Saharan Africa (where a procedure is
defined as any interaction of the company founders with external parties
such as government agencies, lawyers, auditors or notaries), in
contrast with 4.7 procedures in high income member countries of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Also, the median number of days to start a firm in Ghana, according
to the report, is 14 and 26.8 in sub-Saharan Africa, against 9.6 in OECD
countries.
However, the World Bank says sub-Saharan Africa is improving.
Of 231 positive reforms in business regulations implemented worldwide
during the past year, sub-Saharan Africa alone accounted for about 30
per cent, with a total of 69 reforms made in 35 economies, according to
the report released on Tuesday October 27.
The region also stood out in implementing reforms under the Getting
Credit indicator. Of the 32 reforms made globally under the indicator,
14 were carried out in sub-Saharan Africa, with Kenya and Uganda making
significant progress.
Of the top 10 improvers – countries that implemented at least three
reforms and moved up on the global rankings scale, sub-Saharan Africa
also boasts half of the ten countries: Costa Rica, Uganda, Kenya,
Cyprus, Mauritania, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Jamaica, Senegal and Benin.
However, the said sub-Saharan countries still rank poorly on the
global scale: of the 189 countries, Kenya ranks 108th, Uganda is ranked
122nd, Senegal, 153rd, Benin, 158th; and Mauritania, 168th.
The report says, “use of the Internet to streamline business
regulation remains largely confined to more developed economies” and the
region will still need to continue implementing reforms in regulations
to enhance the business climate.
The region remains the one with the smallest share of economies using
electronic filing or payments, though the use of electronic tax filing
and payment systems has increased substantially in several regions of
the world since 2006, especially in Europe and Central Asia.
“In sub-Saharan Africa, very few economies use electronic platforms
in business regulation. Of the nine possible regulatory transactions
included in the analysis, Australia, Denmark and Estonia enable
entrepreneurs to complete eight or more online. The Central African
Republic, the Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea are among the few
economies where none of these transactions exist,” it says.
Ghana is said to be among the countries that introduced or improved
systems which allow electronic submission and processing of
trade-related documents for imports and exports.
Singapore leads the pack in the ease of business ranking with a score
of 87.34, followed by New Zealand with 86.79, Denmark in third with
84.40.
They are followed by the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong SAR, China and the UK, USA, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
By Emmanuel Odonkor
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