Albania among the top reform countries

The Doing Business Report of the World Bank, published for the fifth time this year, measures the regulative costs for business activities in 178 countries worldwide. Ten specific indicators cover the complete business cycle. Michael Klein, the World Bank’s vice-president for ”Financial and Private Sector Development” explains that the report concentrates on the legal provisions and the costs of the laws.

Albania managed to jump from rank 135 to 86, which puts it on rank 2 among the top reforming countries, second only to Azerbaijan. In the last two years Albania has made enormous progress in four of the ten analyzed sectors. The starting of a public credit registry and the new company law which provides better protection of investors and facilitates the registration of a company have been considered especially positive. More points were won by the introduction of a 10-per-cent flat tax and by changes of the tax assessment proceedings which now enable big companies to file their tax returns electronically. The World Bank has also spotted some weaknesses: obtaining licences, which shall be facilitated in 2009, closing a business – so far there has been no insolvency law which can be applied - paying taxes and employing workers must still be improved.

Concerning the favourable business environment Eastern Europe has now even overtaken Southern Asia. Klein explains this by the Eastern European countries´ approach to the EU