The World Bank has highlighted a decline for conducting business in Guyana. The report for World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ranking for 2018 showed that Guyana slipped two places – from 124 in 2017 to 126 for soon approaching 2018. 
Doing Business, measures regulations that affect various areas regarding the life of a business or in setting up new businesses. Some of the categories considered to determine ‘the ease of doing businesses were “starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, and trading across borders. The assessment uses various indicators to analyse economic outcomes and identify the appropriate reforms for business regulation.
Under the category of registering property, Doing Business 2018 found that Guyana has made it easier to transfer property by decreasing the time to transfer a property by allocating higher resources in infrastructure and personnel. The assessment further found that Guyana made enforcing contracts easier by adopting a new code of civil procedures regulating time standards for key court events.
Assessing how the country stacks up to its regional counterparts, Guyana was behind Jamaica, which ranked 70; followed by St Lucia, 91; Dominica, 98; and Trinidad and Tobago, 102. The Bahamas was ranked 119 while Belize placed just ahead of Guyana at 121. While, ranking much higher on the Human Development Index than Guyana, Doing Business contends, by way of its ranking, that tourist giant Barbados is a less favourble nation to conduct business than Guyana. Barbados’ ranking was 132 followed be fellow Caribbean island nation, St Kitts and Nevis at 134.
The highest placed country for the 2018 rankings was New Zealand which was even with last year’s placement. Asian economic powerhouse Singapore ranked second while the United States came in sixth and the United Kingdom, seventh. The bottom three nations were Guyana’s western neighbour embroiled in economic turmoil, Venezuela; in addition to Eritrea and Somalia.
Doing Business is a World Bank Group publication and this year’s report is the 15th in a series of annual reports that measures regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
