Presenting the section of the report which refers to Croatia at a forum organised by the World Bank in Zagreb on Wednesday, the head of the World Bank's private sector development and one of the authors of the report, Simeon Djankov, said that starting a business in Croatia took as many as 12 administrative steps, while the registration of real estate into land registers took more than 950 days.
Starting a business in Croatia takes 49 days on the average, sacked workers need to be paid severance pay amounting to 55 average salaries, while bankruptcy proceedings last more than three years, with creditors managing to obtain some 26 percent of their claims, Djankov said.
To enter real estate into land registers takes 956 days on the average, while in Slovenia it takes 391 days, in Romania 170 days, in the European Union 48, and in Bulgaria only 19 days.
The report compares different parameters of the business environment in 145 countries, which are divided into four groups and ranked according to the simplicity of doing business and the positivity of the business environment.
Croatia is placed in the third quarter of the report, mostly among African countries and countries like Brazil and India.
All this bears witness to administrative obstacles encountered by domestic and foreign entrepreneurs and explains why growth rates are lower than the country's potential, and points to the fact that Croatia needs to implement a number of reforms, especially as regards the process of integration with the EU, Djankov said.
The Croatian government is aware of all shortcomings mentioned in the report, which will be a good basis to determine reform priorities, said the secretary of the National Development Strategy Office, Ante Babic, adding that reforms in the critical sectors - land registers and the judiciary - had already started.
He stated that the One Stop Shop project, which should facilitate and speed up the process of starting new businesses, should be launched in mid 2005.