November 2: The prospect of business environment in Nepal has improved in the last one year, says a recent World Bank (WB) report.

The 15th annual edition of Doing Business report published by the WB on October 31 has commended greater corporate transparency in Nepal during last year.

According to the report, Nepal’s economy ranks third among South Asian countries in terms of business environment.

“The region’s top ranked economies are Bhutan, in 75th place, India (100), and Nepal (105),” the report states.

According to the report, South Asian economies carried out a record 20 business reforms in the past year, bringing to a total of 127 the number of reforms enacted in the region over the past 15 years.

A major focus of reforms in the past year were in the area of protecting minority investors, with half of the region’s eight economies implementing measures to strengthen protections for minority shareholders.

“The reforms included enhanced remedies to address cases of prejudicial transactions between interested parties in India; rules to clarify ownership and control structures in Bhutan; greater corporate transparency in Nepal; and facilitating legal action against directors in case of prejudicial transactions with interested parties in Pakistan,” the report states.

 “With three-quarters of regional economies making positive reforms, it’s no surprise that this is a record year for regional reforms. India, as the largest economy in the region, is leading by example with its eight reforms,” said Rita Ramalho, acting director of the World Bank’s Global Indicators Group, which produces the report Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs.

 Other reforms in India also included the creation of an online single window system to enhance the process of dealing with construction permits; consolidating forms for starting a business; and reducing paperwork for paying taxes; and introduction of new insolvency and bankruptcy code to make resolving insolvency easier, the reports states.

 Bhutan, the region’s top-ranked economy, also implemented four reforms to make it easier to register a new business, improve access to credit, and enhance the enforcement of contracts.

 The report says that the region’s economies perform well in the doing business areas of ‘protecting minority investors’ and ‘staring a business’. Registering a new business, for example, takes an average of 15.5 days, which is faster than the current global average of 20 days, and a significant improvement over the 50 days it took to start a business in the region 15 years ago.

The region lags in areas such as registering property and resolving insolvency. It takes an average of 112 days to register property in South Asia, compared with the global average of 49.5 days. And, creditors for resolving insolvency recover about one-third of the property value, which is less than half of the recovery rate of 71.2 percent in OECD high-income economies.