Argentina

This tenth edition of Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying... Show More + with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting eleven areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and employing workers. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 185 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over time. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where and why. This economy profile presents the Doing Business indicators for Argentina. To allow useful comparison, it also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2012 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period January - December 2011). Show Less -

Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations.... Show More + It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 10 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. In a series of annual reports Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 183 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over time. This economy profile presents the Doing Business indicators for Argentina. To allow useful comparison, it also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2011 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period January- December 2010). The data not only highlight the extent of obstacles to doing business; they also help identify the source of those obstacles, supporting policy makers in designing regulatory reform. Show Less -

Doing Business 2009 is the sixth in a series of annual reports investigating regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents... Show More + quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 181 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over time. This paper presents the summary Doing Business indicators for Argentina. The paper includes the following headings: introduction, starting a business, dealing with licenses, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and closing a business. Show Less -

The country profile for Argentina is based on data from the enterprise surveys conducted by the World Bank in 2006. The enterprise surveys focus on the many factors... Show More + that shape the decisions of firms to invest. These factors can be accommodating or constraining and play an important role in whether a country will prosper or not. An accommodating business environment is one that encourages firms to operate efficiently. Such conditions strengthen incentives for firms to innovate and to increase productivity key factors for sustainable development. A more productive private sector, in turn, expands employment and contributes taxes necessary for public investment in health, education, and other services. In contrast, a poor business environment increases the obstacles to conducting business activities and decreases a country's prospects for reaching its potential in terms of employment, production, and welfare. Enterprise surveys are conducted by the World Bank and its partners across all geographic regions and cover small, medium, and large companies. The surveys are applied to a representative sample of firms in the non-agricultural economy. The sample is consistently defined in all countries and includes the entire manufacturing sector, the services sector, and the transportation and construction sectors. Public utilities, government services, health care, and financial services sectors are not included in the sample. Enterprise surveys collect a wide array of qualitative and quantitative information through face-to-face interviews with firm managers and owners regarding the business environment in their countries and the productivity of their firms. The topics covered in enterprise surveys include the obstacles to doing business, infrastructure, finance, labor, corruption and regulation, law and order, innovation and technology, trade, and firm productivity. Show Less -

The objective of this research was to identify types of hospital governance in Latin America and to examine whether and how these governance types are associated with... Show More + hospital performance. The authors also sought to explore hospital governance conceptually and contextually within national and international experience. The research was based on survey of nearly 400 hospitals in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. The authors conducted a cluster analysis of the results identifying four governance types based on organizational elements theorized to affect hospital behavior: (1) budgetary unit of government; (2) autonomous unit of government; (3) corporate unit of a private conglomerate or broader, private hospital system; or lastly (4) a private and autonomous unit. These types were compared in five analyses: (a) administrators' ratings of their own hospital's performance; (b) hospital performance indicators, such as occupancy and costs per bed; (c) performance tracking vis-à-vis standards; (d) ratings of criteria for selecting leadership; and (e) hospital administrators' qualifications. Show Less -

Argentina has a relatively well developed stock market, with impressive market value gains in the past year driven by the fast growing economy, yet in some ways a shadow... Show More + of its former self before the end of the millennium financial crisis. The market is illiquid, as Argentinean companies prefer to list overseas, and few initial public offers (IPOs) occur. Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires (BCBA) and Mercado de Valores de Buenos Aires (MERVAL) have been less successful in dynamising trading and foreign and domestic investor interest than their best competitors in the region, such as Brazil. Barely a few years ago the BOVESPA main tier experienced similar lack of fresh investor interest, and attained a new life via the Novo Mercado premium corporate governance listing tier, where multiple IPOs went oversubscribed year after year, luring stakeholder confidence. Argentina could be poised to attain its full potential as well, given the market fundamentals and adequate legal and market infrastructure, as there remain several key areas of policy focus which need to be addressed: good governance awareness can be aided by director training, further promotion and implementation of director independence, and strengthening of the efficacy and functioning of audit committees, while avoiding duplication costs by eliminating requirements for alternative similar corporate organs, or supplanting such organs with audit committees. A focus area of consolidating recent gains is corporate disclosure. An area which merits particular emphasis is related party transaction monitoring, including transaction within financial groups where enforcement is more challenging due to several regulators involved. Related to the issue is the need for strengthening the control over auditor quality for listed firms. Finally, ownership information at the ultimate level should be available at a minimum to regulators to aid enforcement, but also to the market. Show Less -

The study looks at the socio-economic conditions for four Latin American countries, focusing on a different country in each volume. Volume 1, documents the socio-economic... Show More + situation in Argentina, mainly based on a wide range of distributional, labor and social statistics collected by the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) from 1992 to 2004. Argentina has witnessed dramatic distributional, labor and social changes in the last three decades. The country has experienced a sharp increase in poverty, inequality, unemployment, and informal labor. Volume 2, describes the socio-economic situation in Chile based on labor and social data collected by the National Socio-Economic Survey (CASEN) from 1990 to 2000. Chile achieved a remarkable reduction in poverty, mainly due to economic growth, as inequality has remained very high. Volume 3, documents the socio-economic situation in Paraguay. The document is mainly based on data collected since 1995 by household surveys. Paraguay is one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region. The combination of sustained income inequality, stagnation and high population growth led to increasing poverty throughout the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s. Volume 4, documents the socio-economic situation in Uruguay. The information is based on labor and social data collected by the Encuesta Continua de Hogares (ECH) from 1989 to 2003. In contrast to the advances in poverty reduction recorded since the mid-eighties, in the last years Uruguay witnessed a deterioration of distributional, labor and social conditions. However, the country's social performance is still one of the best in the region. Show Less -

The study looks at the socio-economic conditions for four Latin American countries, focusing on a different country in each volume. Volume 1, documents the socio-economic... Show More + situation in Argentina, mainly based on a wide range of distributional, labor and social statistics collected by the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) from 1992 to 2004. Argentina has witnessed dramatic distributional, labor and social changes in the last three decades. The country has experienced a sharp increase in poverty, inequality, unemployment, and informal labor. Volume 2, describes the socio-economic situation in Chile based on labor and social data collected by the National Socio-Economic Survey (CASEN) from 1990 to 2000. Chile achieved a remarkable reduction in poverty, mainly due to economic growth, as inequality has remained very high. Volume 3, documents the socio-economic situation in Paraguay. The document is mainly based on data collected since 1995 by household surveys. Paraguay is one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region. The combination of sustained income inequality, stagnation and high population growth led to increasing poverty throughout the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s. Volume 4, documents the socio-economic situation in Uruguay. The information is based on labor and social data collected by the Encuesta Continua de Hogares (ECH) from 1989 to 2003. In contrast to the advances in poverty reduction recorded since the mid-eighties, in the last years Uruguay witnessed a deterioration of distributional, labor and social conditions. However, the country's social performance is still one of the best in the region. Show Less -

The Indigenous Communities Development Project for Argentina aims to establish an Indigenous Areas Pilot (IAP) to strengthen the capacity to manage, use and control... Show More + the land and its natural resources by avoiding intensive capital activities and promoting stimulus based on the ancestral culture of indigenous communities who inhabit these areas: the provinces of Neuquen, Tucuman, and Salta. This report outlines the lessons learned from that project. It focuses on the role of capacity building as a pre-investment, the role of weak institutions as a generator of management problems, the role of provinces in a country organized as a federation, the role of the Indigenous Areas Pilot Project, the need to formulate projects of wider range from the initial stage, the lack of project ownership by the State, and the role of community authorities. Show Less -

In many ways, Argentina's education system has succeeded in creating a stock of human capital, which, by and large, meets the needs of the economy. Still, the education... Show More + system has not succeeded in creating human resources, which enable Argentina to develop into a knowledge based economy. Instead the economy continues to be dominated by low-tech, knowledge extensive industries, which consider the current stock of human capital as largely sufficient (as documented by IMD survey data, for example). This assumption receives further support from the fact that a large part of Argentine researchers are unable to find employment. In other words, there is no strong demand for analytical skills, flexibility and the ability to solve problems independently. And there is no supply. The fundamentals of the Argentine education system are strong: educational attainment is high and comparable to many emerging economies in the Far East as well as Central and Eastern Europe. Likewise, participation is high and the growth in tertiary enrollment, for example, equals the performance of Ireland and Spain, both of which have been very successful in stimulating economic growth and foreign investments in recent years. Also, the number of youth and adults participating in training programs has been increasing. Argentina has, in contrast to Spain and Ireland for example, seen growth rates turn negative and foreign investor confidence drop. Arguably, lack of skilled and relevant human capital has contributed to bringing this situation about, even though it is hardly the only, nor the prime reason. The chief flaws of the Argentine education are low quality and lack of relevance. Student achievement in the basic education system has, according to the Operativo Nacional, stagnated and dropout rates in secondary education have been excessively high. Likewise, reports of low quality in the tertiary education system abound, and several surveys indicate that the relevance of university education in Argentina is low. The training system likewise seems to be in need of realignment. Show Less -