Where is it easiest to start a business?

Oct 30, 2015

Joe Myers

Writer, Forum Agenda

New Zealand has emerged as the economy where it is easiest to start a business, according to the World Bank’s new Doing Business report.

The 2016 report assesses economies on 10 topics including access to electricity, paying taxes and trading across borders. The ease of starting a business measure assesses the paid-in minimum capital requirement, number of procedures and the time and cost for a small- to medium-sized limited liability to start-up and begin formal operation.

New Zealand tops the chart with a near perfect score of 99.96. This is courtesy of a number of factors, including the requirement of only 1 procedure (the global average is over 7) and total time of only half a day – the global average on this factor is over 20 days.

Macedonia follows New Zealand in second place, just 0.1 behind. Canada completes the top 3, with a score of 98.23.

Eastern European and Eurasian nations feature strongly on the list, including Armenia in 5^th, Georgia in 6^th, Azerbaijan in 7^th and Lithuania in 8^th. Jamaica, Hong Kong and Singapore complete the top 10.

To keep up with the Agenda subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Author: Joe Myers is a Digital Content Producer at Formative Content.

Image: A man using his mobile phone stands near a glass window/ REUTERS/Yuya Shino

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.