CAPE TOWN – Brand South Africa has welcomed South Africa’s performance in the 2018 World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index (EDB), which sees the country placing 82nd out of 190 economies.
The World Bank notes two areas of improvement in the EDB 2018. These include South Africa making starting a business easier by reducing the time for online business registration and the country improving the monitoring of electricity outages through recording data to monitor outages better.
General Manager for Research for Brand South Africa, Dr Petrus de Kock, said while South Africa retains its overall ranking at 82/190 this year, it is notable that there are some improvements in starting a business, registering property, getting electricity and protecting minority investors.
The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report is an indicator of the ease of doing business in various economies around the world.
Released in October 2018, this year’s report presents data for 190 economies and aggregates information from 10 areas of business regulation, such as starting a business, getting credit and enforcing contracts, to develop an overall ease of doing business ranking for each economy.
Governance report
The 2018 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) was released this week, showing that South Africa has fallen from sixth to seventh position. The report covers 54 countries.
The Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) provides an annual measure of governance efficiency of African countries.
“The strongest areas of performance for the country are in the Participation and Human Rights (4/54), as well as the Sustainable Economic Opportunity (4/54) indicators. In the African and Emerging Market contexts, governance plays a critical role in shaping the reputation of nations. It is for this reason that the IIAG provides critical insights regarding the profile of the South African Nation Brand.
“Results contained in the IIAG 2018 is a cause for concern for the South African Nation Brand. And the implication is that urgent interventions are needed to turn the negative trends around, based on a robust existing governance regime in the context of a constitutional democracy,” De Kock said.