Member Article

The tax team at Karanović & Nikolić participated in the 13th Edition of Doing Business 2016 – Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency, a World Bank Group Flagship Report. Renowned as one of the most influential policy publications across the globe, Doing Business provides a detailed analysis on the state of health of world-wide economies. What makes this report specific is the way in which it measures the so-called health of economies, since it does not resort to using visible macroeconomic tools (i.e. public debt or growth) like many similar lists do, instead focusing on the regulatory system, the efficacy of bureaucracy, and the nature of business governance – the justification of such an approach mainly being the increasingly evident importance of the private sector for the overall condition of an economy. In order to provide the most comprehensive ranking of economies according to the overall ease of doing business within them, the 13th edition of Doing Business looks at 189 economies across a range of industries.

These economies have been analysed across 10 areas of business regulation, through case studies concerning the process of 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. One of the more relevant insights gained from this analysis has been that a quick look at the top of the table already reveals the best performers not to be those countries with little regulation, but those countries that are equipped with favourable rules that encourage an efficient and transparent way of doing business, while at the same time protecting public interest.

The data provided by our tax team helped rank the countries encompassed by our jurisdictions with Macedonia leading the way at no.12, and Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia following at no.29, 40, 46, 59 and 79, respectively. All of them thus, perhaps surprisingly, presenting more favourable regulatory environments for doing business than some of the global economic powerhouses such as China (84), Brazil (116) and India (130).