Economy

I’m humbled by the quality of the responses to my last entry – they are insightful, meaningful and educative. And every one of them shows deep concern over how difficult it is to do business in our country. But your responses scared me. I suddenly realized that Doing Business ranking for Bhutan may be terribly inaccurate. Why? Because Doing Business measures regulations and procedures that affect business activity, regardless of how well or poorly the regulations are applied. Your responses all say the same things in various ways: that regulations are not our biggest constraint to doing business; that…

Everywhere I look I see people, thousands of them, buying and selling goods and services. It must be easy to do business in Thailand. In fact it is: Doing Business 2009 ranks Thailand 13th out of the 181 economies that the World Bank studied. Doing Business investigates government regulations that affect the following 10 aspects of business activity: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business. Bhutan, as we know very well, is ranked 124 (read Doing business isn't easy anywhere).…

But it’s getting even harder in Bhutan! In “Really hard business” (read blog entry) I had grumbled that doing business in our country was really hard – the World Bank had ranked Bhutan 119th of the 178 countries it had evaluated on ease of doing business in 2008. Guess what? Doing business in Bhutan has become even harder! Doing Business 2009 report now ranks Bhutan 124th out of 181 countries that were investigated (see ranking). And in South Asia, Bhutan, ranked 7 of 8, fares better than only one country, war torn Afghanistan (see ranking). So what, you may…

We may have lost the elections. But I still read our manifesto every now and then. It reminds me of our promises. Reminds me to serve with humility. And to walk the talk. The following article is a “box” from our manifesto. Enjoy. Doing business isn’t easy anywhere But, it’s really hard in Bhutan! The World Bank has been looking into how easy it is to do business in 178 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Laws, regulations and their enforcements are evaluated in each of the following 10 stages of business companies’ life: 1. starting a business 2. dealing…