- Published: 28.10.2019.
PM: Croatia moves up on Doing Business ranking, further steps needed
Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Thursday that Croatia had achieved progress in the latest World Bank (WB) 'Doing Business' study, adding, however, that it is necessary to take further steps to improve various aspects of doing business so that based on varied criteria the country could climb even higher up the ladder.
Croatia has continued to improve its business regulations and is catching up with the best regulatory practices in the world, the World Bank said in a press release on Thursday after the latest Doing Business 2020 report was released which shows that Croatia moved up seven spots since its previous ranking.
This year Croatia rank 51st among 190 countries compared to its occupying the 58th place in the previous ranking.
"We achieved progress in a series of criteria that this publication monitors," Plenkovic said opening today's cabinet session.
He recalled that Croatia recently moved up in ranking from 68th to 63rd place in the World Economic Forum competitiveness report.
"In any case, we need to continue taking steps to improve various aspects of doing business so that we can climb even further up the ladder according to various criteria and with that, improve our business environment, attract investments and be a reliable environment for further investments," Plenkovic said.
The WB said in its press release that Croatia has implemented three reforms.
The country is praised for having made starting a business easier "by abolishing the requirements to reserve the company name and obtain director signatures for company registration, and by reducing the paid-in minimum capital requirement."
"Dealing with construction permits has become less costly by reducing the water contribution for building a warehouse. Transfer of property has become easier by decreasing the real estate transfer tax and reducing the time to register property title transfers. But Croatia also made accessing credit information more difficult by ending the distribution of individual credit data," the WB says in its press release.
Croatia has the best score in the category of cross-border trade, maximum 100 points.
Its worst performance is in the category of issuing construction permits.
Some of the Croatian main trading partners -- Germany, Slovenia and Italy -- rank 22nd, 37th and 58th respectively.
Text: Hina