Balkan States Score Well in Doing Business Ranking

Six Balkan countries - Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria - have been ranked among the top 50 countries in the world in the Doing Business Report of the World Bank for 2018, released on Tuesday.

Macedonia is the highest performing Balkan economy, ranked in 11th place among 190 economies worldwide in terms of quality of its business regulations.

But Kosovo made it to the top 10 most improved world economies in the period 2016-2017, covered by the report, ranking in 40th place overall.

Croatia, Albania, Greece and Bosnia and Herzegovina remained out of the global top 50, ranking in 51st, 65th, 67th and 86th places respectively.

In its 2018 edition, the Doing Business reports focuses on the area of reforms designed to create jobs. The bank's study has concluded that that entrepreneurs in 119 economies out of 190 saw improvements in their local regulatory framework in 2016-2017.

 In total, 264 business regulatory reforms have been documented, 53 of which in the ten countries that have achieved the greatest improvements: Brunei,  Thailand, Malawi, Kosovo,  India, Uzbekistan, Zambia, Nigeria,  Djibouti and El Salvador.

The report measures the quality of regulations in 11 areas of the business life, including 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. 

Labour market regulations are traditionally measured, but this year were not included in the report.

The top three champions of the global ranking this year are New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark. The three states occupying the bottom places are Venezuela, Eritrea and...