The Doing Business rankings
营商环境排名
First across the tape
率先冲破官僚防线
The remarkable influence of the World Bank’s Doing Business report
世界银行《营商环境报告》的显著影响

A CLOTHING WORKSHOP, with just two sewing machines, established long ago on the outskirts of Lima, Peru’s capital city, may be one of the world’s most influential companies, even though it never started operating—and was never intended to do so. The business was conceived as an experiment by Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist, who commissioned a team to go through the motions of setting up the firm. Their aim was to find out how long it would take to comply with all the laws and regulations required to start a business. The answer was 289 painstaking days.
很久以前，在秘鲁首都利马的市郊建成了一家只有两台缝纫机的小制衣厂。它可能是全球最有影响力的公司之一，尽管它从未开业，也根本没打算开业。它是秘鲁经济学家埃尔南多·德索托（Hernando de Soto）开展的一项实验，他委托团队走了一遍成立这家制衣厂所需的程序，目的是了解依照法规成立一家公司需要多长时间。结果是要苦熬289天。

The answer now is a mere 26 days, according to the World Bank’s latest report on the ease of doing business around the world. Inspired in part by de Soto’s example, the bank each year asks thousands of lawyers, accountants and other experts how easy it would be for a company to obtain an electricity connection, transfer the title of a warehouse, enforce a debt contract, pay its taxes and so on. Based on the answers, the bank then ranks countries, from New Zealand at the top to Somalia at the bottom.
根据世界银行最新的全球营商便利度报告，现在在那里成立一家公司只要26天。一定程度上受德索托研究的启发，世行每年向成千上万名律师、会计师和其他专家了解企业在处理各方面事务上的便利度，包括获得电力、转让仓库所有权、执行债务合同、缴纳税款等。它随后根据答案对各国的营商环境排名，新西兰位居第一，索马里垫底。

The report has its critics. Since it ignores infrastructure, price stability, workforce skills and the reliability of suppliers, among other things, it is not really a summary measure of the ease of doing business in a country. It is instead a snapshot of the cost of complying with formal regulations for companies that are not small enough to dodge the law or big enough to bend it. In one edition, the report described itself as a “cholesterol test”. But it is sometimes interpreted as a full medical.
该报告不乏批评者。它忽略了基础设施、物价稳定性、劳动者技能及供应商可靠性等多种因素，因此并不能综合体现一国的营商便利度，只是大致反映了那些既没小到可成“漏网之鱼”、也没大到可以“只手遮天”的公司按章办事的成本。某年的《营商环境报告》自称是一项“胆固醇测试”。但有时它会被人解读成全面的体检报告。

It has nonetheless become hugely influential. Costing less than 0.25% of the bank’s operating budget, it has caught the attention of some of the world’s most powerful people. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, has resolved to lift his country into the ranks of the top 50 by 2020. It climbed to 63rd place this year, from 142nd when he took office. The country’s success may have helped galvanise a similar effort in China (which improved this year to 31st place) and in Pakistan, which was also heralded this year as one of the ten most reformed economies.
​尽管如此，它仍然产生了巨大的影响力。它的成本不到世行运营预算的0.25％，却引起了全球一些手握重权的人物的关注。印度总理莫迪决心要在2020年前把印度的排名提升至前50。他上任时印度的排名是第142位，今年升至63位。印度的成功可能激发了中国和巴基斯坦在这方面的努力。中国今年排名上升至第31位，巴基斯坦和中国及印度一样，位列营商环境改善最大的十个经济体。

But the biggest improvement in score was awarded to Saudi Arabia. Once ranked tenth, it had slipped to 94th place by 2016. This year it bounced back to 62nd. It is now the cheapest (and third-easiest) place to transfer a property title to a buyer. Firms can get an electricity connection in 35 days, little more than half the time it took in 2018. The government has also set up an online one-stop shop, where an entrepreneur can jump through many of the hoops required to start a business, instead of traipsing around multiple ministries and offices, for commerce, labour, social insurance, tax and Zakat (a religious tithe).
然而得分飞跃最大的是沙特阿拉伯。该国曾一度排名第十位，但到2016年已滑落至第94位，今年又重新攀升到第62位。现在，沙特阿拉伯是产权转让费用最低（转让便利度排名第三）的国家。企业可在提交申请后的35天内接入电力，差不多比2018年少一半时间。政府还搭建了网上一站式办事平台，方便创业者集中办理成立公司的各种手续，而不必在商务、劳工、社会保险、税务和扎卡特税（Zakat，一种宗教税项）等诸多政府部门和办公室之间疲于奔命。

The kingdom’s reform efforts were overseen by a dedicated committee, bringing up to 50 government bodies together, that met every Wednesday at 1pm. The committee also included business folk who explained how regulations feel to the regulated. The structure left the bureaucracy with nowhere to hide. “You have to come and either say you’ve done it; or if you didn’t do it what’s stopped you,” says Dr Eiman Al-Mutairi, head of the country’s National Competitiveness Centre. Any roadblock that lasted more than a week was referred up to Mohammad bin Salman, the kingdom’s crown prince.
沙特阿拉伯的改革工作由一个专设的委员会监督。该委员会最多召集50个政府机构在每周三下午一点开会，还邀请商界人士畅谈企业对监管法规的感受。这种做法让官僚主义无处躲藏。“你必须来开会，说明已经做出的改革，不然就得解释是什么阻碍了改革。”沙特国家竞争力中心的负责人艾曼·穆塔里（Eiman Al-Mutairi）说道。所有持续超过一周的“障碍”会被上报给王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼（Mohammad bin Salman）。

Not all reforms have won favour with business. Companies no longer need a government stamp on their registration certificates, for example. But many firms want one anyway, because it looks good on their papers. It’s not easy to cut red tape when firms treat it like a ribbon and bow.
不是所有的改革都受到企业欢迎。例如，公司的注册证书上不再需要政府盖章，但许多公司还是想要，因为它们觉得盖上政府大印才好看。如果企业把红头文件当作了装点门面的大红花，要破除这些繁文缛节就不容易了。

打赏

微信赞赏支付宝赞赏