Macedonia is ranked 3rd best global reformer of the business regulation in the newly published World Bank Doing Business Report. As a result, Macedonia moved up in the overall ranking by 37 places from 69th in 2009 to 32nd place in the Doing Business 2010 Report. Within the region of the South East Europe, Macedonia is ranked better than both EU member countries as well as other countries with the aspiration to join the EU, including Bulgaria (44), Slovenia (53), Montenegro (71), Albania (82), Serbia (88), Croatia (103), Greece (109), Kosovo (113) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (116). The significant improvement of the ranking of the country is a result of the  reforms undertaken by the Macedonian Government for improving of the business climate in order to attract bigger foreign and domestic investments.

Macedonia has improved on 7 out of 10 business environment indicators measured by the report. Business registration has been shortened to 4 days as a result of the continuous reforms in the one-stop-shop system for business registration. The procedures for issuance of construction permits were significantly simplified and shortened with the changes to the Law on Construction which established strict deadlines for the relevant institutions to act upon an construction permit application. Furthermore, the reforms in the labour market increased flexibility of the labour market which accompanied with the reduction of the social contributions and simplification of the collection system eased the employment of workers. The improvements in the cadastre shortened and simplified property registration. Currently almost 90 percent of the country is covered with the real estate cadastre which facilitates real estate and land transactions. The access to credit also improved compared to last year due to reforms in the credit registry, implementation of a new credit registration software and expansion of  the credit registry data base. Improvements made in the Trade Company Law increased transparency of the shares trading, improved reporting of the listed companies and strengthened the capacity of the Security Exchange Commission. Reforms in the tax system lowered the tax burden, while introduction of electronic payment of taxes, implementation of gross salary concept and integrated collection social contribution improved tax collection.

Doing Business 2010 Report was officially presented by the World Bank and the Macedonian Government to the business and the donor community and the academia on 8 September. At the occasion, the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski indicated that Macedonia will continue to work in the next 12 months on implementation of the reforms in the business environment especially focusing on the areas where moderate results were achieved in Doing Business 2010 Report such as bankruptcy procedure, enforcing contracts and providing construction building licenses.

Additionally, Macedonia improved its ranking in the recently released World Economic Forum Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 where it moved up by 5 places from 89 in 2008-2009 report to 84 place in this year report. The Global Competitiveness Report’s competitiveness ranking is based on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), developed for the World Economic Forum introduced in 2004. The GCI is based on 12 pillars of competitiveness, providing a comprehensive picture of the competitiveness landscape in countries around the world at all stages of development. The pillars include Institutions, Infrastructure, Macroeconomic Stability, Health and Primary Education, Higher Education and Training, Goods Market Efficiency, Labour Market Efficiency, Financial Market Sophistication, Technological Readiness, Market Size, Business Sophistication, and Innovation.

For more detail information on Doing Business 2010 Report please go to  www.doingbusiness.org, while for more detail information on Macedonia's country profile in the Doing Business 2010 Report please go to:  www.doingbusiness.org/Documents/CountryProfiles/MKD.pdf 

More detail information on the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 could be found on  http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm