African Economies Make Consistent Progress in Improving Business Regulation, Report Finds Botswana’s Ranking Shows Improvement
Gaborone, October 23, 2012 —A new report by IFC and the World Bank finds that of the 50 economies making the most improvement in business regulation for domestic firms since 2005, 17 are in Sub-Saharan Africa. This year’s report marks the 10 th edition of the global Doing Business report series and over the life of the report, Africa has consistently recorded a high number of reforms. Rwanda particularly stands out as having consistently improved since 2005. A case study in this year’s report features Rwanda, which since 2005 has implemented 26 regulatory reforms as recorded by Doing Business .
Botswana made improvements one area of regulation, and made it more difficult in one area: trading across borders and paying taxes respectively. Exporting and importing became faster thanks to the introduction of a scanner by the country’s customs authority and an upgrade of South Africa’s customs declaration system, both at the Kopfontein–Tlokweng border post. At the same time, Botswana made paying taxes more costly for companies by increasing the profit tax rate. Botswana was ranked 59, from 54 in 2012.