Malaysia is now the world’s 12th easiest place to do business
Malaysia has jumped three spots on a World Bank ranking for the world’s easiest places to do business, up from 15th place last year.
It is now among five Asian economies that made it into the ranking’s top 15. The others are Singapore (2nd place), Hong Kong (3rd), Korea (5th) and Taiwan (15th).
The ranking, published on Thursday (Oct 24) in the Doing Business 2020 report, assessed economies on areas including property registration, tax payments, contract enforcement and insolvency procedures.
Malaysia scored highly on access of electricity, with the world’s most reliable electricity supply and most transparent tariff indexes, the report said. It shared top spot for electricity access with Costa Rica and Ireland.
It also made dealing with construction permits easier by streamlining the process and eliminating the road and drainage inspection performed by Kuala Lumpur City Hall this year, the report noted.
The World Bank added that the country had formed a regulatory reform committee to improve the coordination of efforts across Government agencies and issuing a certificate of completion report took two weeks or less – compared to six months in poorer-performing economies.
Malaysia, China and the UK were also the economies with greatest extent of disclosure index when it came to protecting minority investors.
The World Bank added that China (31st place) was among the top 10 most-improved for ease of doing business and had established eight reforms in areas like cross-border trading, minority investor protection, and electricity access.
