Maldives is ranked World number ONE on a list of 181 countries, ranked by the World Bank/IFC in terms of ease of "paying taxes" (ahem, looks like the folks at World Bank forgot that we in Maldives hardly pay any taxes).
On the overall "Ease of Doing Business" we slid one notch to 69th place – making us still the most ‘business friendly’ country in South Asia. It is, however, disheartening to see that our performance in some of the most important indicators for business friendliness is still way below that of a number of developing countries – Maldives is ranked (177) in registering property; (145) in getting credit; (70) in protecting investors; (90) in enforcing contracts; (121) in trading across borders; and (123) for closing a business. Among our major trading partners, Singapore topped the list at World number 1 for a fourth consecutive year. Malaysia was ranked number 20, UAE 46, India 122, and Sri Lanka 102.
7 comments:
we have gone down one place, uh? I thought our international standing is only going to improve in this 'Aneh Dhivehiraajje'. Maybe world bank people still don't know that Democracy has arrived in maldives. ke ke
mee hama kes thanakee
'"Ease of Doing Business" we slid one notch to 69th place.'
Basically I can do the business of doing 69 without any lube or sliding whatsoever.
I never thought of economics as erotic before but now my mind has changed.
Let me see, stocks, brokers, and so on, now I get it! Economics IS interesting after all! Thanks for opening me to a whole new world of imagination.
I will surely be following your blog very very very closely.
..as if the World Bank is run by oracles and saints. WB spends millions on consultancy and research but has never got anything right.
These guys sit in Washington and would come up with any excuse to visit Maldives for a holiday break. Of-course they write a report afterwards..
The global economic crisis, the Asian crisis, debt in Africa and underdevelopment are all happening under the 'watchful' eyes of WB and IMF.
Shame on these guys... your are better off listening to Madoff than WB.... bunch of thugs (remember Wolfwitz ) set up by US to dominate the world..
@ Anon 1:59- yes, everything about the World Bank isn’t ok. There are so many things wrong with WB, its sister org IMF and most of the other multilateral orgs. But if I were you, instead of a Mugabe style lambasting of these org, I would call for some soul searching of our country to be done. As Naeembe says, Singapore is the most business friendly country in the world for a fourth consecutive year. Doest this make you want to find out what the Singaporeans are doing differently? Aren’t there lessons we could learn?
We do pay taxes; customs duty, anual company fees, trademark fees. What we dont have is income tax.
Hope we improve our standing in coming years.
Great post Naimbe.
Surely we have a long way to go. But I wonder why the government hasn't started even taking baby steps right now, because as Simon pointed out in his blog, we are only changing the dirty diapers left by a 30-year-old dictatorship and the next five years is just enough time for Maldives to start crawling. It will take much longer for us to start walking, running and jumping.
Post a Comment