Economy: Higher ‘doing business’ ranking ‘achievable’ – Busa

A recent Business Unity SA (Busa) call for ‘hard decisions’ and ‘unequivocal messages’ to ‘build investor confidence’ has rekindled interest in the World Bank’s latest ‘doing business’ report, in which SA is ranked 82 out of the 190 countries assessed. Referring to the ranking in his February State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa said his government had set itself the ambitious target of being ‘among the top 50 global performers within the next three years’. He went on to say that, to that end – as part of ‘ongoing work to remove constraints to greater investment’ – the Presidency, InvestSA, National Treasury and the Department of Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation had established a ‘team’ tasked with addressing the ‘policy, legal, regulatory and administrative barriers that frustrate investors’, notes Pam Saxby for Legalbrief Policy Watch. 

In last month’s Sona, instead of reporting on any progress made the President referred to ‘a set of priority reforms’ on which his government is ‘urgently working’ with the aim of improving ‘the ease of doing business’ – by ‘consolidating and streamlining regulatory processes, automating permit and other applications, and reducing the cost of compliance’. While no further detail was provided during last week’s debate on the address and Ramaphosa’s response, outgoing Busa CEO Tanya Cohen believes the goal set in February ‘is achievable’ (Engineering News). Given that the processes entailed only began this year, she does not expect the next World Bank ‘doing business’ report to reflect ‘any significant improvement’. However, if ‘current efforts are anything to go by’, Cohen appears to be optimistic about SA’s position in the 2020/21 edition.

Among other things, the World Bank’s sub-national report ‘Doing business in SA 2018’ refers to ‘entrepreneurship levels … well below those in many emerging markets’. It appears to attribute this to ‘government policies and bureaucracy’, which were found to be ‘among the lowest-performing factors’ in the entrepreneurship environment assessment concerned. In addition, reforms aimed at improving the regulatory environment for businesses are ‘slow to take hold’. However, where they have been successfully implemented ‘results have been striking’ – suggesting that ‘significant improvement’ nationally is within reach.

Follow Pam Saxby on Twitter (@SaxbyPam)