Kathmandu, October 28

Nepal has slipped five places from last year in the ‘Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency’ report, published by the World Bank on Tuesday. In the report that covers 189 economies, the country has dropped to the 99th position from last year’s 94th position.

The World Bank’s annual ‘Doing Business’ report, now in its 13th year, looks at the regulatory environment for small and medium-sized companies to see how it hampers or helps them conduct business, from starting up and paying taxes to registering property and trading across borders.

By surveying and ranking economies, the 188-nation development lender hopes that its ‘report card’ will encourage regulation that contributes to economic growth and prosperity for people.

Singapore remains the easiest place to do business, while developing countries stepped up their pace of business-friendly reforms in the past year, according to report.

Among the South Asian nations, Nepal is the second best place to do business after Bhutan which has ranked in the 71st position in the report.

Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from one to 189. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. The rankings are determined by sorting the aggregate distance to frontier scores on 10 topics, each consisting of several indicators, giving equal weight to each topic. The rankings for all economies are benchmarked to June 2015.

The 10 topics covered by the report are ‘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’.

Within the South Asian region, Nepal has fared pretty well in the ‘Registering Property’, ‘Trading Across Borders ‘and ‘Resolving Insolvency’ topics where the country has ranked in the second place. But in the ‘Getting Credit’ topic, Nepal has ranked sixth (lowest) along with Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The report has said, however, that Doing Business 2015 ranking is not last year’s published ranking but a comparable ranking for Doing Business 2015 that captures the effects of such factors as data revisions and changes in methodology.