Ease of Doing Business 2019: China jumps from 82nd to 46th rank

The Ease of Doing Business (EODB) is an index calculated every year by World Bank, that provides a quantitative measure of the easiness of doing business in 190 countries and economies.

EODB takes into consideration specific practical parameters and regulation for

• starting a business,

• dealing with construction permits,

• getting electricity,

• registering a property,

• protecting minority investors,

• getting credit,

• paying taxes,

• trading across borders,

• resolving insolvency and

• enforcing contracts.

EODB ranks the countries based on their global Distance to Frontier (DTF). DTF shows the distance of each economy to the frontier, which is represented by the best performance observed for each of the parameters across all economies.

An economy’s distance to frontier is reflected on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the lowest performance and 100 represents the frontier. The ease of doing business ranking ranges from 1 to 190.

According to the latest report published by World Bank for the year 2019, China is the second top improver (after Djibouti) in this year’s assessment, placing 46th in the ranking led by New Zealand.

China is currently the second country by gross domestic product and achieved a growth of 6.9% in 2017. In the recent years, important and relevant policies have been adopted by the leading party of the country in order to boost the economy and further open the market to foreign investments.

Hong Kong and Taiwan ranked 4th and 13th, both losing a spot compared to 2018 ranking.

The first Asian country in the ranking is Singapore, that confirms the 2nd place obtained last year, while Malaysia placed 15th, leapfrogging 10 countries.

Thailand ranked in the TOP30, before other developed economies like Spain, France, Japan and Italy.

Table 1. Ease of Doing Business score, first 5 and last 5 spots.

Table 2. Change in Distance to Frontier (DTF), best 5 and worst 5 performance

Table 3. Change in Doing Business ranking, best 5 and worst 5 performance