Sherine Abdel-Razek reports on how economies in the MENA region rank in a World Bank business report Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen have all experienced revolutions in 2011, and it appears that they have all been so absorbed by their struggle for democracy that they have implemented very few reforms to facilitate doing business. As shown by the latest World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC) Doing Business report, none of these countries has adopted any reforms this year, with the exception of Yemen, which improved its tax payment systems, and Syria, which has made starting a business less complicated. Other areas such as Bahrain, which saw clashes between its Sunni leaders and majority Shia population, and the West Bank and Gaza, which continue in their struggle against Israeli occupation, witnessed no such reforms. Titled Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World, the report assesses regulations affecting domestic firms in 183 economies. It analyses regulations that apply to an economy's businesses during their life cycle, including starting up and operations, trading across borders, paying taxes and dealing with insolvency. This year's statistical findings cover regulations measured from June 2010 through May 2011. Rankings on the ease of doing business have been expanded to include indicators on access to electricity. While the report does not measure security and political stability, the ranking of countries experiencing the Arab Spring, where insecurity and political instability have become the norm, have worsened. Tunisia slipped six positions down the ladder from last year to 46th place, Yemen lost five places to become the world's 99th reformer, and Egypt came two ranks behind at 110th place. Meanwhile, Syria improved its ranking from 136th to 134th. The report's authors explain that the retreat in ranking is a result of other economies implementing reforms to business regulations, therefore outdoing this group. As for the region as a whole, 11 out of 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa have improved business regulations for companies in the past year, despite political and economic uncertainty. Saudi Arabia remains the regional leader, with a global ease of doing business ranking of 12. It was the best reformer in the 183 surveyed countries with regards to property registration. Furthermore, it topped the region in the ease of starting a new business and of acquiring construction permits and credit. Morocco was the world's best reformer, the same status Egypt acquired in 2008, as it improved its business regulations the most compared to other surveyed economies, climbing 21 places to the 94th rank. This Morocco achieved by simplifying the process of acquiring construction permits, easing the administrative burden of tax compliance, and providing greater protection to minority shareholders. Since 2005, Morocco has implemented 15 business regulatory reforms. As for Egypt, the report highlighted that it undertook many reforms since 2005. The most prominent of these was the lowering of the number of days needed to start a business from 37 to seven, while reducing the cost of acquiring a construction permit from 1,154 per cent of the per capita national income to 174 per cent. Also in Egypt, the number of days required to register a property was reduced to 72 days from 193, while the cost of cross-border trading decreased from $1,014 to $615. However, such change did not prevent the country from heading south on the rankings ladder, dropping from 99th place in 2010 to 108th and 110th in the following two reports. More globally, 88 per cent of Eastern European and Central Asian countries have adopted at least one kind of reform through the last year, making them the best performers as a regional bloc. They were followed by sub-Saharan Africa, where 78 per cent of countries saw the implementation of some reform. Meanwhile, the percentage for the MENA region stood at 61 per cent. Hong Kong, Singapore, China, New Zealand, the United States, Denmark and Norway maintained last year's rankings as the world's easiest places to do business. The Republic of Korea, meanwhile, was a new entrant to the top 10. According to the report, governments in 125 economies out of 183 measured implemented a total of 245 business regulatory reforms -- 13 per cent more reforms than in the previous year. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a record 36 out of 46 economies improved business regulations this year.
