CASTRIES, St Lucia, Thursday
St Lucia has beaten out its CARICOM neighbours, including long-established international financial centre The Bahamas, to be recognised within the World Bank International Financial Corporation’s Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World report as the top place to conduct business in this region.
St Lucia, which is ranked at 52, held its own against the other CARICOM states in the report issued on Monday that assessed regulations affecting domestic firms in 183 economies and ranked the economies in 10 areas of business regulation, such as starting a business, resolving insolvency and trading across borders.
The next highest ranking fell to St Lucia’s fellow Eastern Caribbean State, Antigua and Barbuda, with a ranking of 57. In contrast, The Bahamas was much further down at 85; while Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, which have traditionally been seen as major corporate centres in the region, were ranked at 68 and 88, respectively. However, Jamaica was the only Caribbean country to be highlighted as an example of territories that make it easy to register property thanks to its using an electronic database for encumbrances. Barbados did not feature in the ranking at all but St Kitts and Nevis and St Vincent and the Grenadines, which are increasingly promoting their reputation as international business centres, stood at 95 and 75, respectively. The other CARICOM nations making it into the top 100 were Belize at 93, Dominica at 65, and Grenada at 73. Guyana and Haiti did not make it above this bar, ranking at 114 and 174, respectively.
Overall, Singapore continues to be the top-ranked country for doing business, followed by Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United States, Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Iceland and Ireland.
