E-Government – the Key to Serbia’s Success on Doing Business List
Construction permits and more efficient procedures for starting a business have once again helped Serbia to progress on the Doing Business List and achieve the best ranking in 12 years of being analyzed by the World Bank regarding the ease of doing business – 43rd position among the 190 countries. In the category of construction permitting, Serbia has entered the top 10 countries of the world by jumping from the 36th position, thanks to an additional reduction of procedures, with almost a double cost reduction. The time needed for starting a company in our country is now 5.5 days compared to previous seven, with a three-fold lower cost, which led to increased rank from the 47th to the 32nd place in the category of starting a business. The development of e-government and electronic services for businesses will be the key to further development. These are the conclusions of the II annual conference "Doing Business 2018: Strengthening Serbia's Competitiveness" organized by NALED at the Hyatt Hotel with the support of the USAID Business Enabling Project and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in the presence of Prime Minister Ana Brnabić and Deputy Prime Minister Zorana Mihajlović.
"Since 2014 when the Serbian government began systematically improving the business environment to create conditions for new investments, we have been constantly moving forward on the Doing Business list and we are showing our strong commitment to creating conditions for new investments, being the main driver of the economy. Now that we are at the top of the list in a number of categories, further advancement is a particular challenge because the better we are ranked, the more difficult it is to make further progress. That's why we are continuing with reforms immediately, in order to improve our positions in other categories," said Prime Minister Ana Brnabić.
The Prime Minister announced the improvement of regulations that will bring faster connection to the electricity network, cadaster reform and protection of minority shareholders, the adoption of amendments to the Law on Bankruptcy, which is in parliamentary procedure, and the development of e-government.
“The data shows that e-government stands as the key for improving the business environment, by ensuring greater transparency and efficiency," Brnabić concluded.
"The importance of e-government is best seen on the example of construction permits where we have skipped 176 countries in three years and reached 10th place from 186th, which is an incredible success. We rightly expect that in the category of starting a business we will reach the top 10 countries by introducing electronic procedure for starting a company, and that we will be a new hit in the category of registering property once it becomes possible to register real estate ownership through e-counter in only 3 days, which we are working on with the Ministry of Construction," - said Vladimir Novaković, member NALED Managing Board.
According to him, based on NALED’s analysis, active measures are being taken towards the final elimination of seals from more than 70 regulations, and we expect success in the category of tax payments, since we are co-operating with the Ministry of Finance on introducing electronic registration of property tax and the transfer of absolute rights for legal entities. With the implementation of e-invoices and improvement of the VAT refund system, which NALED insists on, we can reach the very top of Doing Business Lists in this area as well. Deputy Director of the USAID Business Enabling Project Dusan Vasiljevic said that it only took six months to prove that the new reforms were implemented in order to advance on the DB 2019 List, "an important product that drives reforms around the world".
"The USAID BEP project team is proud of the contribution to the improvement of the conditions for doing business in Serbia through participation in the construction permitting and inspections reforms, the abolition of 138 parafiscal charges, amendments to the Labor Law, the introduction of a program budget and the creation of a real estate valuation profession. I am pleased to announce that USAID will continue to support reform processes in the upcoming period," said Vasiljevic.
At the conference, it was pointed out that the institutions did not do enough in several areas. The worst place was achieved in the category of obtaining electricity connections where Serbia fell to 96th place. Almost nothing has been improved in the categories of getting credit and the protection of minority shareholders, and it is especially noteworthy that we fell on the list in the category of resolving insolvency, despite a complete draft law waiting to be adopted for already a year. In these areas, Serbia is in the upper half of the table, but the World Bank's estimates nevertheless reveal that we are still far from the leader of the list - New Zealand.
Serbia is one of the best ranked countries on the Doing Business List in Southeast Europe. Better ranked states are Macedonia (11), Slovenia (37), Kosovo* (40) and Montenegro (42), while Serbia was ranks higher than Romania (45), Hungary (48), Bulgaria (50), Croatia (51) Albania (65), Greece (67) and B&H (86).