Best Countries for Business 2013

For the second year in a row, Bloomberg Rankings presents its exclusive analysis of countries around the world based on how attractive they are to business. With its relatively low cost of starting a business, as well as its import and export efficiencies, among other factors, Hong Kong again takes top honors. The U.S. moves up a notch from last year to second place, and Japan jumps from seventh to No. 3.

For this study, Bloomberg Rankings analyzed data from 11 sources. In all, 161 nations were ranked on six broad criteria that included the cost of starting a business, the cost of labor and materials and the cost of moving goods. The study also considered each country’s level of global economic integration, the “readiness” of its consumer base to participate in economic activity and “less tangible” costs such as inflation and accounting adaptability.

Again, the so-called BRIC countries make a relatively poor showing. China drops to 24th place from 19th last year. India, Russia and Brazil don’t even clear the top 50, ranking Nos. 54, 56 and 61, respectively.

2012 Rankk	2011 Rankk	Country	Score	Degree of econ. integrat.	Cost of setting up a business	Cost of labor & material	Cost of moving goods	Less-tangible costs	Readiness of local consumer base
1	1	Hong Kong	79.6%	75.3%	96.7%	61.8%	88.6%	79.7%	67.4%
2	3	United States	77.0%	82.1%	82.3%	76.7%	85.2%	67.2%	65.4%
3	7	Japan	75.6%	82.3%	70.8%	78.2%	81.1%	66.6%	80.0%
4	2	Netherlands	75.3%	70.1%	71.6%	69.0%	87.7%	78.6%	69.3%
5	6	Germany	74.6%	82.9%	61.8%	73.5%	87.4%	71.3%	75.2%
6	5	Australia	74.4%	79.2%	70.3%	73.0%	81.4%	73.1%	69.2%
6	12	Canada	74.4%	65.1%	71.8%	68.5%	86.2%	75.9%	74.0%
8	9	Singapore	74.0%	57.9%	90.4%	52.2%	87.9%	77.3%	66.7%
9	17	Denmark	73.8%	77.9%	84.4%	60.1%	73.2%	79.0%	66.7%
10	4	United Kingdomm	73.4%	82.7%	69.0%	71.4%	81.7%	70.2%	66.7%
11	9	Austria	73.2%	79.2%	80.7%	66.8%	72.4%	71.0%	70.6%
12	14	Sweden	72.8%	78.2%	69.2%	70.8%	76.0%	73.3%	71.7%
13	13	Belgium	72.5%	70.7%	85.6%	68.6%	81.2%	58.3%	66.8%
14	8	France	71.9%	75.8%	72.1%	69.7%	81.5%	63.4%	69.7%
15	16	Finland	71.4%	75.1%	59.9%	68.1%	79.5%	76.9%	69.7%
16	21	Spain	71.0%	72.1%	66.8%	71.3%	81.5%	65.4%	67.4%
17	11	Switzerland	70.0%	71.3%	70.5%	65.3%	67.3%	76.3%	69.5%
17	24	United Arab Emirates	70.0%	69.1%	59.0%	64.3%	90.9%	71.0%	60.2%
19	18	Norway	69.8%	81.8%	66.9%	59.7%	67.5%	78.0%	72.2%
20	22	Poland	69.7%	77.0%	63.7%	71.2%	68.6%	67.9%	77.0%
21	29	South Korea	69.6%	56.2%	69.8%	72.9%	78.6%	63.6%	69.5%
22	26	Ireland	69.2%	54.5%	77.3%	63.4%	68.6%	79.0%	61.2%
23	20	Italy	68.6%	69.7%	77.8%	71.2%	70.4%	55.6%	66.8%
24	19	China	68.5%	80.3%	73.3%	70.8%	82.5%	43.7%	64.4%
24	15	Luxembourg	68.5%	39.1%	89.4%	45.9%	75.1%	81.1%	62.4%
26	22	Chile	67.9%	65.7%	74.1%	60.5%	72.6%	71.3%	56.7%
27	29	Qatar	67.1%	62.9%	63.7%	65.6%	76.5%	68.8%	59.3%
28	32	Malaysia	66.7%	73.7%	69.2%	63.5%	80.8%	52.8%	60.6%
29	37	NewZealand	66.3%	74.6%	68.6%	44.1%	74.5%	76.5%	60.7%
30	29	Portugal	66.1%	54.7%	74.3%	57.0%	73.4%	69.3%	58.1%
31	27	Hungary	65.8%	61.1%	73.3%	68.7%	58.1%	65.6%	65.9%
32	46	Cyprus	65.7%	55.5%	76.0%	49.6%	66.4%	72.9%	71.9%
33	34	Czech Republic	65.1%	68.7%	63.3%	70.0%	62.8%	60.4%	69.5%
34	25	SouthAfrica	64.7%	56.5%	65.7%	71.0%	76.0%	59.2%	46.4%
35	55	Slovenia	63.9%	52.3%	65.6%	56.4%	68.9%	70.4%	63.8%
36	28	Latvia	63.5%	60.6%	74.7%	61.5%	66.3%	53.9%	61.7%
37	40	Lithuania	63.1%	57.6%	62.8%	62.9%	72.4%	54.6%	67.9%
38	41	Turkey	62.9%	70.4%	59.8%	66.9%	73.3%	41.5%	75.1%
39	59	Iceland	62.8%	36.0%	73.0%	46.4%	70.6%	73.5%	65.2%
39	41	Israel	62.8%	68.0%	67.8%	58.5%	65.1%	59.2%	58.5%
41	52	Mauritius	62.7%	34.7%	83.5%	47.9%	67.8%	62.8%	68.9%
42	44	Saudi Arabia	62.6%	67.3%	57.3%	61.9%	77.6%	54.3%	56.3%
43	43	Bulgaria	62.2%	65.9%	67.3%	62.9%	55.5%	59.2%	66.2%
43	34	Estonia	62.2%	57.6%	70.7%	55.8%	64.8%	60.3%	61.8%
43	53	Greece	62.2%	67.8%	59.2%	60.5%	64.5%	60.8%	64.0%
43	60	Thailand	62.2%	72.7%	74.1%	61.9%	73.3%	39.4%	51.6%
47	57	Bahrain	62.0%	53.8%	58.0%	47.4%	77.2%	76.0%	48.6%
47	32	Romania	62.0%	75.5%	54.6%	71.2%	56.7%	52.8%	74.2%
49	62	Croatia	61.9%	63.2%	65.1%	54.3%	63.4%	63.2%	63.9%
49	56	Peru	61.9%	60.4%	63.4%	66.5%	63.1%	54.6%	63.1%

Countries are ranked on a scale from 0 to 100 percent on six factors.

1. Degree of economic integration (weighting of 10%)

Includes membership in the World Trade Organization, most-favored nation tariffs, correlation to the global market, market concentration, reach of global market research and country risk.

2. Cost of setting up a business (20%)

Includes the costs, steps and time required, as well as financing a business and foreign direct investment.

3. Cost of labor and material (20%)

Includes cost of labor (productivity, compensation, health expenditures, firing costs, minimum wage and size of labor force) and cost of material (natural resource rate of depletion and natural resource rent).

4. Cost of moving goods (20%)

Includes import and export efficiencies, transportation efficiency, logistics performance, liner shipping connectivity and quality of port infrastructure.

5. Less tangible costs (20%)

Includes corruption perception index, international property rights index, inflation, taxes and accounting adaptability.

6. Readiness of the local consumer base (10%)

Includes size of middle class, household consumption, tariff on imports and GDP per capita.

Scores for individual factors were calculated by using the percentage of the maximum for index-based and qualitative criteria. In the 2011 ranking, scores were calculated on a percent-rank basis.

Sources: Bloomberg, CIA World Factbook, Conference Board, Heritage Foundation, International Monetary Fund, International Labor Organization, Transparency International, United Nations, World Bank, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization.

But this info is not very accurate because by example Spain´s GDP is 30% larger than S.Korea at Nominal prices, for example. Unemployment increased from 9% to 26% during the four years of economic adjustment (not 50%), but precisely now the economy is much more productive. Labor costs have fallen and productivity has increased.

Some Spanish companies are among the biggest and more efficient in the World.
1. Inditex (Zara) is the largest cloth retaling company in the World.
2. Telefonica is the largest and more profitable Telecom company in the Eurozone (larger than Deutsche Telekom).
3. Santander is the largest and more profitable bank in the Eurozone (a third larger than Deutsche Bank)
4. Grupo ACS is the largest construction company in Europe (recently bought Hotchief, the largest construction company in Germany)
5. Acerinox is the largest company in the World in the area of stainless steel.
6. Iberdrola is the largest company in the World in the area of renewables.
7. INDRA is the largest European company in the area of flight simulators.
8. Airbus Military has its headquarters in Spain, which is the third shareholder of AIRBUS…etc, etc.

Public Debt is 10 points lower than the U.S. or the U.K., and already got a trade surplus with the rest of the E.U. Spain enjoys the second High-Speed networkd in the World, and Spanish companies like OHL are building the Saudi Arabian high speed railway, and also Spanish companies are enlarging the Panama Canal.

Spain´s life expectancy is 12 in the World while the U.S. is just 40.

Written by mjose. This entry was posted on 04/11/2013 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Business, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Tagged World best business countries You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.