ZAGREB, October 24, 2019 – The latest Doing Business study, issued by the World Bank on Wednesday, shows that Croatia has continued to improve its business regulations and now ranks 51 on the ease of doing business ranking, moving up seven spots since its previous ranking.
The World Bank says that Croatia “is catching up with global regulatory best practices.”
This year when the study covers 190 countries, Croatia ranks 51 on the ease of doing business, compared to 58 last year.
“The country’s ease of doing business score went up from 73.0 in the Doing Business 2019, to 73.6 in this year Doing Business 2020,” the bank says.
“The European Union’s top performer in the Doing Business report is Denmark, with a score of 85.3. This year Croatia ranks closer to other EU countries such as Belgium, Slovak Republic, Netherlands and Poland.”
The bank says that “Croatia 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.”
“We are encouraged to see Croatia improving its business regulations and narrowing the gap with the global regulatory frontier,” Elisabetta Capannelli, World Bank Country Manager for Croatia, was quoted as saying.
“The Government chose to focus on easing doing business as one of its top priorities by establishing a working group under the Prime Minister’s watch and efforts made during the past year are reflected in this year’s improved ranking,” Capannelli said.
“We expect to see even stronger commitment this year in areas such as starting a company and the implementation in Zagreb and at local level, of the recently launched reforms in construction permits. The World Bank’s Justice for Business Project currently under preparation with the authorities will help support the government’s reform agenda to improve the business climate,” she said.
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.
The ease of doing business ranking is topped by New Zealand, and is followed by Singapore and Hong Kong.
Denmark, South Korea, USA, Georgia, the UK, Norway and Sweden are also in the top ten performers.
More news about doing business in Croatia can be found in the Business section.
