Among the 155 countries, Croatia is ranked 118th, Slovakia 37th, the Czech Republic 41st, Hungary 52nd, and Poland 54th.
The World Bank report is based on indicators such as time needed for starting a business, dealing with licences, hiring and firing, registering property, and getting credit. Also evaluated are investor protection, tax payment, cross-border trade, enforcement of contracts and business closure.
Croatia is ranked 148th when it comes to the time necessary to issue various licences to start a business. It is placed 43rd in the category of contract enforcement. As regards investor protection and getting credit, Croatia is ranked 135th and 131st respectively.
Croatia managed to get into the first half of the list in only two categories - contract enforcement (43rd) and business closure (66th). In the category of cross-border trade the country was ranked 109th, the same ranking as for hiring and firing.
It was ranked 103rd in the category of business entry, 99th in property registration and 85th in tax payment.
The authors of the report note that changes for the better can be expected because Zagreb has launched reforms in the areas of business entry and property registration, which they say could result in a higher ranking in 2006/2007.
To speed business entry, in May the government launched a one-stop-shop, cutting the number of steps for registering a business from 12 to 5, while the time in days was cut to around 20. The Financial Agency (FINA) is managing the process independently from outside the commercial court, which ensures efficiency, reads the World Bank report.
Property registration is being streamlined, thanks to the digitalisation of cadastre and land books as well as updating of land books in Zagreb and Split (which accounted for 90 percent of the backlogs). Land registration transactions are no longer handled by judges, thus cutting registration time significantly and reducing the backlog by some 200,000 cases, reads the report.