BANGKOK, November 1, 2018 – Thailand carried out four key reforms last year to improve business regulations affecting small and medium-sized businesses, says the World Bank Group’s Doing Business 2019: Training for Reform report, released yesterday.
Sustained focus on business regulatory reform in recent years is helping to narrow the gap between Thailand and global regulatory best performance. Thailand’s Ease of Doing Business (EODB) score, an absolute measure of the country’s progress toward global best practice, reached 78.45 this year, up from 77.39 last year. In relative terms, Thailand remains among the top 30 of the 190 economies in the EODB ranking, placing at 27 this year compared to 26 last year.
“Thailand continues to demonstrate its commitment to improving the business climate for private enterprise. This will help the people of Thailand get better jobs that will lead to improved living conditions. The World Bank looks forward to continuing our support to help the country succeed in adopting global best practices, especially in areas where there is room for improvement,” said Mara Warwick, Country Director for Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia and Philippines.
Thailand’s new reforms – the second highest number of reforms for Thailand in a single year since the beginning of the Doing Business project in 2003 – carry forward the country’s regulatory reform agenda. Through the four reforms the following gains were achieved:
- Starting a business was made less costly by introducing fixed registration fees.
- Getting electricity was made easier by streamlining the number of procedures needed to obtain a new connection; also made electricity tariff changes more transparent.
- Paying taxes was also made easier by enhancing its online platform for calculating and filing corporate income tax.
- Trading across borders was made faster by introducing the E-Matching system for electronic cargo control, thus reducing the time for border compliance.
We will continue to oversee and be responsible for ensuring that efforts to improve ease of doing business are implemented rapidly so that public services can increase convenience for doing business and helps enhance people’s lives,” said Pakorn Nilprapunt, Secretary-General, Office of the Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC).
Doing Business 2019 recorded a historic number of reforms worldwide in getting electricity, with East Asia and the Pacific countries accounting for the highest share of reformers. The Thai economy is among the strongest performers on this indicator, achieving an EODB score of 98.57 relative to global best practice. The report found that the area of resolving insolvency is the most challenging worldwide. Thailand’s EODB score on resolving insolvency has improved from 75.64 last year to 76.64 in this year’s report.
The full report and its datasets are available at www.doingbusiness.org
