Malaysia up 2 notches in World Bank ranking – Economies for Ease of Doing Business

Source: New Straits Times
30 October 2014 @ 8:12 AM

KUALA LUMPUR: THE World Bank has ranked Malaysia 18th out of 189 economies for ease of doing business, up two notches from last year, and ahead of countries such as Taiwan (19th), Switzerland (20th) and Japan (29th).

The World Bank’s Doing Business 2015 Report, released yesterday, showed the top three performers were Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Bernama reports that Malaysia ranked first among emerging east Asian economies.

A new method was used for the ranking because of limitations in the previous mechanism, such as loss of information, inability to track progress and inequality in business friendliness measured in larger countries. 

The ranking is now based on the distance to frontier (DTF) score — score of country that is ranked No. 1 — rather than the percentile rank. Malaysia’s score edged up to 78.83 points from last year’s 76.84 points.

The report looked at 10 areas: 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.

Three areas that Malaysia ranked highly were fifth for protecting minority investors, 11th for trading across borders and 13th for ease of starting a business.

Some of the areas that the country needs to improve on will be addressed at the next Special Task Force to Facilitate Business meeting next month. They are in registering property, getting credit and enforcing contracts. 

There will be a decision made on how we are going to come up with measures and solutions to address the issues,” said Malaysia Productivity Corporation director-general Datuk Mohd Razali Hussain as he chaired a video conference with the Washington-based World Bank here yesterday. 

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