The World Bank announced that Serbia has advanced on the latest Doing Business list for four places, from 47th to 43rd place for ease of doing business.
“If we look at Serbia and compare it with an ideal business environment, the number of points in Serbia has increased from 72.87 in Doing Business 2017 to 73.13 in Doing Business 2018,” said Stephen Ndegwa, World Bank Country Manager in Serbia.
„This means that in the last year Serbia improved its business regulations as captured by the Doing Business indicators in absolute terms—the country is narrowing the gap with countries that have the best business environment – Ndegwa said, as announced by the World Bank.“
According to the report, period 2016/17 Serbia had facilitated the establishment of business entities, reduced administrative fees for authentication of signatures and increased the efficiency of the register, reducing the time required for business registration, improving the reliability of the cadastre system by applying a geographic information system, facilitating the implementation of the contract by adopting a new law on enforcement that extends and refines for the responsibilities of the executor and the jurisdiction of the courts during the enforcement proceedings.
When it comes to obtaining building permits, Serbia is ranked 10th.
„ Over the past 15 years, Serbia has made significant progress in several Doing Business areas and implemented a total of 28 reforms, mainly in the area of Registering Property (with 6 reforms), Starting a Business and Resolving Insolvency (5 each).The number of reforms in Serbia over the past 15 years compare well with the global per-country average of 17 and ECA average of 28– said Thomas Lubeck, IFC Regional Manager for Central and Southeast Europe.
„As a result, starting a new business in Serbia now takes only 5.5 days compared to 56 days 15 years ago, which is 3 days less than the average across OECD high-income economies .The time to resolve a commercial dispute through a local first-instance court in Serbia has also been significantly reduced over the past 15 years .Now it takes 635 days compared to 1028 days in 2003. “
It is stated, in this report, that Serbia underperforms in the area of Getting Electricity. It takes 125 days to connect to the electricity grid, much more than the average of 79 days across OECD high-income economies.
