World Bank Praises Business-Friendly Skopje

Skopje and the Bosnian Serb city of Banja Luka have emerged well from the World Bank’s regional report, “Doing business in South East Europe”.

The report surveys business performance of 22 cities from seven countries in the region. The report was published this week in Vienna and updates a previous survey done in 2008.

The four benchmarks are: starting a business, handling construction permits, registering property and enforcing contracts.

The report generally pinpoints progress in all of the 19 cities that have been surveyed for a second time, noting that all have progressed at least in one of the surveyed areas.

But only Macedonia's capital, Skopje, and the Bosnian Serb de facto capital of of Banja Luka are pinpointed as making progress in all four benchmarks over the past three years.

It takes just three days and a little over 100 US dollars to start up a business in Skopje, the report continues.

The worst in the region for starting businesses are the capital of Kosovo, Pristina, and the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where entrepreneurs wait almost two months to register their enterprises.

Meanwhile the best city for enforcing a contract appears to be Zrenjanin, in north-eastern Serbia, where commercial disputes are resolved in 10 months on average. The worst for settling a commercial dispute is Prizren, in Kosovo, where the waiting time usually exceeds four years.

Businessmen face the least difficulty when registering a property in the Moldavan capital, Chisinau, and in the town of Balti in the north of the same country.

The Bosnian town of Mostar is the worst for registering property.

The Montenegrin city of Niksic is marked out as the best for dealing with construction permits. The Serbian capital Belgrade is the worst in this regard.

The survey included cities in Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Serbia. While Croatia has dropped out since the last survey, Moldova has been added.

“The wide variation in business regulation across the region points to ample room for improvement,” states the report.

The report notes that while many business factors depend on the local authorities, governments can also help a great deal by improving regulations, cutting bureaucracy and red tape.