Construction permits and more efficient procedures for starting a business again helped Serbia advance in World Bank’s Doing Business list.
Serbia achieved the best place in 12 years – it is ranked 43rd among 190 countries, the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) said in a statement on Wednesday.
In the permits category, Serbia entered the top 10 by jumping from the 36th place, thanks to an additional shortening of the procedure, with almost double the cost reduction.
The time required for starting a company is now 5.5 days instead of seven, with three times lower the cost, that pushed Serbia from 47th to the 32nd place in the business start-up category.
The development of e-government and electronic services for the economy will be key to further development, it was assessed during the second annual conference “Doing business 2018: Strengthening Serbia’s competitiveness,” organized by NALED at the Hyatt Hotel, with the support of the USAID Partnership for Better Business Regulation and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and in the presence of Prime Minister Ana Brnabic and Deputy Prime Minister Zorana Mihajlovic.
Serbia is one of the best placed countries on this year’s Doing Business list in Southeast Europe. Ahead are Macedonia (11), Slovenia (37), Kosovo* (40) and Montenegro (42), while Romania (45), Hungary (48), Bulgaria (50), Croatia (51) Albania (65), Greece (67) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (86) are all ranked below it.
