September 2008 - According to Doing Business 2009, the sixth in an annual series of reports published by IFC and the World Bank, regulatory reform speeds up in Middle East and North Africa (MENA). For a fifth year, the region’s most popular area for reform is business start-up, with nine economies making improvements. The next most popular area for reform, credit bureau enhancements that improve access to credit, saw activity in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and the West Bank and Gaza. What is Doing Business? Doing Business ranks economies based on 10 indicators of business regulation that record the time and cost to meet government requirements in starting and operating a business, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business. The rankings do not reflect such areas as macroeconomic policy, quality of infrastructure, currency volatility, investor perceptions, or crime rates.
| “Economies need rules that are efficient, easy to use, and accessible to all who use them. Otherwise, businesses are trapped in the unregulated, informal economy, where they have less access to finance and hire fewer workers and where workers lack the protection of labor law,” said Michael Klein, World Bank/IFC Vice President for Financial and Private Sector Development. |
Doing Business 2009 ranks 181 economies on the overall ease of doing business. The top 25 are, in order, Singapore, New Zealand, the United States, Hong Kong (China), Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Norway, Iceland, Japan, Thailand, Finland, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Bahrain, Belgium, Malaysia, Switzerland, Estonia, Korea, Mauritius, and Germany.
Reforms in Tunisia
Tunisia implemented reforms in these areas: starting a business, getting credit (information), protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders (making it more difficult) : Tunisia abolished the paid-in minimum capital requirement for limited liability companies with the new the Law on Economic Initiative. The law also allows minority investors to request a judge to rescind a prejudicial related-party transaction.
The Central Bank of Tunisia now collects and distributes more detailed credit information from banks, both positive information (such as loan amounts) and negative information (such as arrears and defaults). And individuals and firms can check their credit data in all Central Bank offices.
The Ministry of Finance introduced a new option for paying taxes, "téléliquidation”. Firms can file their tax returns online and determine the exact amount of their payment before paying the taxes at the tax office.
A new requirement that freight arriving at the port be accompanied by a unit of the customs authority has increased the time to import by 1 day.
>> More Data on Tunisia Aggregate rankings in MENA region (June 2007- June 2008) 
>> More Data on Tunisia and MENA region (PDF) |
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