Australia in top ten countries for ease of doing business14 September 2009The World Bank has rated Australia as one of the top ten countries in the world for ease of doing business. The Bank’s ratings are published in the Doing Business 2010 Survey, which has just been released. Australia has remained at a ranking of 9th out of the 183 economies looked at for this Survey, and is ranked 7th for OECD countries. The Index covers topics such as Starting a Business, Employing Workers, Paying Taxes, Getting Credit, Enforcing Contracts, and Closing a Business. Australia ranked highly in each of these indicators. In particular: Employing Workers – Australia tops the world in ease of hiring workers, in lack of rigidity over hours, in ease of redundancies, and in ease of employment. Australia’s zero out of 100 rating on all ‘Employing Workers’ measures compares to the OECD average of 26.5 for the difficulty of hiring index; 30.1 for the rigidity of hours index; 22.6 for the difficulty of redundancy index; and 26.4 for the rigidity of employment index. Starting a Business – Australia ranked at 2 for the smallest number of procedures needed to launch a business, compared to 5.7 for the OECD average. In addition, the process of establishing a business only takes two days in Australia compared to an average of 13 days for other OECD countries. More information |