Mauritius most business-friendly in Africa

Mauritius is ranked as Africa’s most business-friendly country at World Bank’s Doing Business survey report overall standing.
Mauritius is ranked 20 out of 183 economies. It landed as the top Sub-Saharan economy for second year in a row in terms of the overall regulatory ease of doing business.
It adopted a new insolvency law, established a specialised commercial division within the court, eased property transfers, and expedited trade processes.
Rwanda, Cape Verde and Zambia led the 27 sub-Saharan African countries that improved their position in World Bank’s Doing Business survey, a report that measures the ease of conducting business in 183 countries.
In a year of fast-paced reform, 67 regulatory reforms were recorded in 29 of 46 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, finds Doing Business 2010: Reforming through Difficult Times, the seventh in a series of annual reports published by IFC and the World Bank.
And for the first time a Sub-Saharan African country—Rwanda—was the world’s top reformer, based on the number and impact of reforms implemented between June 2008 and May 2009. Ghana, which is set to become West Africa’s newest oil exporter, ranked highest on the continent in terms of access to credit, while the southeast agricultural economy of Malawi “demonstrated itself on a world scale,” in its improvements in regulating contracts, according to the report.
A third of the report’s top 30 reformers since 2005 are in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Rwanda, Ghana, Mauritius and Madagascar.
About half of all trade facilitation reforms in 2009-10 took place in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. Several were motivated by regional integration. Some of these efforts built on existing initiatives such as the Southern African Customs Union.
In East Africa single border controls speeded up crossings between Rwanda and Uganda. Different electronic data systems are still used by customs authorities in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. But efforts are under way to create a single interface between these systems. Overall, 27 of 46 Sub-Saharan economies implemented Doing Business reforms.
In the Middle East and North Africa 11 of 18 economies implemented business regulation reforms. Six modernised customs procedures and port infrastructure to facilitate trade and align with international standards. These include Bahrain, the Arab Republic of Egypt and UAE. Singapore is ranked first followed by Hong Kong in the report.
Doing Business analyses regulations that apply to businesses during their life cycles, including start-up and operations, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business. Doing Business does not measure all aspects of business environment that matter to firms and investors. But it does not measure security, macroeconomic stability, corruption, skill level, or strength of financial systems.