2016年-世界发展银行全球_Doing_Business_Economy_Profile_2017___South_Africa_112页_1mb

Summary of Doing Business 2017: South Africa

Core Content

The Doing Business 2017 report, published by the World Bank Group, evaluates the ease of doing business across 190 economies, including South Africa. It measures regulatory environments in 11 key areas of the business life cycle, such as starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, and resolving insolvency. The report provides aggregate rankings and distance to frontier (DTF) scores, which help compare regulatory performance and identify areas for reform.

South Africa is ranked 74th in the ease of doing business ranking (DB2017), a slight decline from 72nd in DB2016. Its DTF score is 65.2, slightly lower than DB2016's 65.29, indicating a small regression in regulatory performance. The report also introduces gender-specific indicators in several areas, reflecting the unique challenges women face when starting a business, registering property, or dealing with legal processes.

Main Points

• Ease of Doing Business Ranking:

  • South Africa ranks 74th globally in DB2017, a drop of 2 places from DB2016.
  • The ranking is based on a comparison of regulatory practices across 10 business-related areas.
  • The ranking does not include labor market regulation, which is presented separately in the report.

• Distance to Frontier (DTF) Score:

  • Measures how far an economy is from the best regulatory practices on each indicator.
  • South Africa's DTF score is 65.2, indicating it is still some distance from the global frontier.
  • The DTF score is useful for tracking the absolute progress in regulatory reforms over time.

• Gender Dimension:

  • Introduced in four indicator sets: starting a business, registering property, enforcing contracts, and labor market regulation.
  • South Africa has similar procedures for both men and women in starting a business (7 procedures for both), but the report highlights the additional procedures that may affect women, such as gender-specific requirements for opening a personal bank account.

• Key Indicators:

  • Starting a Business: South Africa ranks 131st, with a DTF score of 80.47. The time and cost for men and women are similar at 43 days and 0.2% of income per capita, respectively.
  • Dealing with Construction Permits: South Africa ranks 99th, with a DTF score of 68.21. It requires 19 procedures, taking 141 days and costing 0.9% of warehouse value.
  • Getting Electricity: South Africa ranks 111th, with a DTF score of 63.18. It takes 84 days and incurs a cost of 156.1% of income per capita.
  • Registering Property: South Africa ranks 105th, with a DTF score of 59.03. It requires 7 procedures, taking 23 days and costing 7.3% of property value.
  • Getting Credit: South Africa ranks 62nd, with a DTF score of 60.00. It requires 7 procedures, taking 203 hours per year and costing 28.8% of profit.
  • Protecting Minority Investors: South Africa ranks 22nd, with a DTF score of 70.00. It scores 7.0 on the minority investor protection index and 8.0 on conflict of interest regulation.
  • Paying Taxes: South Africa ranks 51st, with a DTF score of 81.09. It involves 7 payments per year, taking 203 hours and a total tax rate of 28.8% of profit.
  • Trading Across Borders: South Africa ranks 139th, with a DTF score of 58.01. It takes 100 hours to export and 144 hours to import, with a cost of $428 for border compliance and $657 for import compliance.
  • Enforcing Contracts: South Africa ranks 113th, with a DTF score of 54.10. It takes 600 days to enforce a contract and costs 33.2% of the claim.
  • Resolving Insolvency: South Africa ranks 50th, with a DTF score of 57.94. It takes 2 years to resolve insolvency and has a recovery rate of 35.1 cents per dollar.

Key Information

• The report includes comparator economies such as Botswana, Mauritius, and the United Kingdom for each indicator, allowing for more nuanced comparisons.
• Methodological updates in 2017 include:
  • Adding postfiling processes to the paying taxes indicator.
  • Introducing a gender dimension in selected indicators.
  • Including a new pilot indicator on selling to the government.
• The data in the report are current as of June 1, 2016, except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover January–December 2015.
• The report does not evaluate labor market regulation in the overall ease of doing business ranking but presents it in the economy profile.
• Limitations of the Doing Business methodology:
  • It does not include factors such as market proximity, infrastructure quality, or institutional strength.
  • It focuses on local limited liability companies in the largest business city.
• The report is available on the Doing Business website at http://www.doingbusiness.org, along with data notes and methodology details.

Conclusion

The Doing Business 2017 report provides a comprehensive overview of South Africa's business environment, highlighting both challenges and opportunities for reform. While South Africa has made some progress in certain areas, such as the quality of land administration and shareholder governance, it still lags behind many comparator economies. The introduction of gender-specific data is a significant step toward understanding and addressing the unequal regulatory burden faced by women entrepreneurs. Policymakers can use this report to benchmark performance, identify bottlenecks, and design targeted reforms to improve the business environment.