30 May 2006

World Bank ranks NZ a great place to do business

Finance Minister Michael Cullen has welcomed further proof from the World Bank that New Zealand remains a top performing economy.

In December the bank rated New Zealand as the easiest country out of 155 to do business in. Australia ranked sixth.

The World Bank has now released a detailed breakdown of the 2005 survey results comparing New Zealand's performance against the OECD average.

"It is particularly pleasing to find that, compared with the most advanced economies in the world, which make up many of our competitors, New Zealand is consistently above the OECD average," said Dr Cullen.

Amongst the findings:

- Starting a business (ranked 4th) – entrepreneurs can expect to go through two steps to launch a business over 12 days compared to the OECD average of 6.5 steps over 19.5 days.

- Enforcing contracts (ranked 4th) – it takes 50 days on average to enforce a contract through legal action compared to nearly 226 days in the OECD on average.

- Hiring and firing workers (ranked 4th) – for New Zealand the index measuring the ease of hiring and firing workers is 7 compared to an OECD average of 35.8 (a higher value represents more rigid employment regulations).

- Trading across borders (ranked 15th) – it takes 8 days to export a standard shipment of goods compared to 12.6 days in the OECD on average.

- Paying taxes (ranked 16th) – a medium size company must make eight payments and spend 70 hours a year paying taxes compared to 16 payments and 197 hours in the OECD on average.

"This is the kind of reality check National Party leader Don Brash should be reading before he starts knocking New Zealand."

The detailed results are available at:
http://www.doingbusiness.org/ExploreEconomies/Default.aspx?economyid=140

ENDS

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