Vietnam climbed nine spots from the 91st to the 82nd position out of 190 economies with a score of 63.83 points on a 100-point scale, said the World Bank Doing Business 2016: Equal Opportunity for All Report recently released by the World Bank.
Vietnam’s rankings have improved strongly in recent years. It secured the 99th place out of 183 countries in 2012 and 93rd position out of 189 countries in 2014.
Some indicators had clear progress. For example, companies spent up to 872 hours on tax payment a year in 2012 and 2013 but they only needed 540 hours in this report.
In this report, Vietnam posted improvements in some indicators such as getting electricity, protecting minority investors, paying taxes and trading across borders. Particularly, the indicator of protecting minority investors jumped 31 places to the 87th position.
Other indicators stayed unchanged or fell from the previous rankings. Notably, the country saw a drop of 10 places in the “Starting a business” indicator. Vietnam made starting a business more difficult by requiring enterprises to complete nine procedures. The time for a procedure requires 1-10 days. The highest appreciated indicator, Dealing with construction permits, requires 10 procedures to complete, with each needing 1-82 days for completion.
This year, for the first time, Doing Business includes a gender dimension in three of the 10 topics covered: Starting a business, registering property and enforcing contracts. The report finds that, in those areas, few East Asia and Pacific economies have gender barriers. The exceptions include Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam, where extra procedures are required for married women to start a business.
The report shows that over two-thirds of the region’s 25 economies implemented 45 reforms in the past year to make it easier to do business, compared to 28 reforms the previous year.
Four economies in the East Asia and Pacific region rank among the top 10 economies globally in the Doing Business rankings. The top-ranked economies are New Zealand (at No. 1), followed by Singapore (2), Special Administrative Region of China (4) and South Korea (5).
Many economies carried out three reforms onwards, including Indonesia (7), Brunei Darussalam (6), Vanuatu (4), Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand (3 each).
Notably, two economies from the region, Brunei Darussalam and Indonesia, are among this year’s top 10 improvers in the world.
Indonesia, which implemented seven reforms during the past year, made starting a business easier by, among other things, abolishing the minimum capital requirement for small and medium-sized enterprises and by encouraging the use of an online system to reserve company names. As a result, it now takes 22 days to start a business in Jakarta, compared with 46.5 days previously.
Brunei Darussalam, which implemented six reforms in the past year, increased the reliability of power supply by introducing an automatic energy management system for the monitoring of outages and the restoration of service. Additionally, businesses can now get electricity faster due to the utility in Brunei Darussalam streamlining the processes of reviewing applications. As a result, a business can get connected to the grid in 35 days, compared to 56 days previously.
“New reforms tackling multiple barriers to business in the East Asia and Pacific region are the stepping stones to enhance business activity. Despite marked improvements, economies in the region still have improvements to make in order to ease the business climate for local entrepreneurs,” said Ms Rita Ramalho, Manager of Doing Business Report.
Challenges remain particularly significant in the areas of starting a business, trading across borders and enforcing contracts. For example, it takes on average 57 hours to comply with border regulations for exports in the region, this is significantly longer than the average time of 12 hours it takes in OECD high-income economies.
Anh Mai
Vietnamese
