Economy

WB: China picks up pace in business regulation

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-11-05 09:09

WASHINGTON - Doing business in China has been becoming easier thanks to regulatory reforms in the past several years, according to a researcher of Doing Business Project of the World Bank Group.

China's changes are "very impressive," Sylvia Solf, a key author of the World Bank's influential annual report Doing Business 2011: Making a Difference for Entrepreneurs, told Xinhua on Thursday.

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According to the newly released report, since 2005, about 85 percent of the world's economies have made it easier for local firms to operate, through 1,511 improvements to business regulation.

"China was among the 15 most-improved economies, having introduced in the past several years 14 regulatory changes that make it easier to do business -- affecting nine areas covered by Doing Business," said the report.

Solf noted that China, which tops the Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in terms of doing business, has implemented drastic reforms during the past five years. The country created its credit registry system, in which more than 60 of the population established credit history.

"This is a tremendous achievement," she said. Besides, China has established collateral registry system and launched new property law and company law. Those are among the improvements that China has achieved for doing business since 2005.

As for the key challenges, Solf said that like other countries, China has to keep up with the pace of the reform to simply the process of doing business.

She suggests that large countries like China need to better coordinate different level of regulators in order to improve business environment.

Coordination between different level of governments should be "as simply as possible", she added.