My Egg Noodles

Thailand is rated the 15th country in the world for ease of business via a report issued by the World Bank. Singapore came in first, which I expected, while Congo come in last.

The methodology for this list is broken down into the following:

• Starting a business – Procedures, time, cost and minimum capital to open a new business

• Dealing with licenses – Procedures, time and cost of business inspections and licensing (construction industry)

• Hiring and firing workers – Difficulty of hiring index, rigidity of hours of index, difficulty of firing index, hiring cost and firing cost

• Registering property – Procedures, time and cost to register commercial real estate

• Getting credit – Strength of legal rights index, depth of credit information index

• Protecting investors – Indices on the extent of disclosure, extent of director liability and ease of shareholder suits

• Paying taxes – Number of taxes paid, hours per year spent preparing tax returns and total tax payable as share of gross profit

• Trading across borders – Number of documents, number of signatures and time necessary to export and import

• Enforcing contracts – Procedures, time and cost to enforce a debt contract

• Closing a business

I haven’t had experience is setting up a company elsewhere so it’s hard for me to comment. All I say that if Thailand is ranked 15th, countries ranked down from 16 must be a nightmare to set up and manage.

What do you make of the list?