Philippines ranks 103th in ease of doing business list

The Philippines ranked 103th in the world on the World Bank Group's annual ease of doing business measurement released on Wednesday.

This year's report, titled "Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency," compares the "ease of doing business" in 189 economies across 10 indicators.

It finds that East Asia and the Pacific is the second most represented region, after Europe, in the world's top 20 economies.

Moreover, a majority of economies in East Asia and the Pacific are undertaking reforms to further improve the regulatory environment for small and medium-sized enterprises.

However, despite the country's relatively strong economic growth recently, the Philippines performs worse in all ten indicators compared to that of 2015. Especially, it only ranked 155th in protecting minority investors and 165th in starting a business.

Karl Kendrick Chua, senior country economist of the World Bank for the Philippines, said in order to improve business environment, the country should consolidate inter-agency procedures in business registration, improve automation and risk management on border operations, reduce monthly payments for SMEs towards annual payments, and improve regulation on insolvency. Enditem