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Lanka made most progress in South Asia

Sri Lanka made the most progress in South Asia last year in easing business start-up accoding to The Doing Business indicators.

Afghanistan cut the number of procedures for transferring property and began digitizing title deeds.

Central Bank of Sri Lanka

Bhutan made it easier to start a business by cutting the number of procedures required.

The country also implemented its first labor law. The law prohibits forced labor, discrimination, sexual harassment, and child labor. It also removes the 12-month limit on fixed-term contracts, eases restrictions on night work, and does away with mandatory pay premiums for daytime overtime. Bhutan also sped up property registration by a month by adding more judges to handle property transfers.

India is now setting the standard for reform in South Asia, with an explicit policy objective to become a leading business-friendly economy. Besides making it easier to trade across borders, India increased access to credit by expanding credit bureau coverage to individuals as well as businesses. It also introduced an electronic registry for security rights granted by companies.

Pakistan extended overtime limits for retail workers and made working hours more flexible.

The country’s private credit bureau now reports both positive and negative information on borrowers and stores more information on loans.

The public credit registry eliminated its loan threshold, boosting coverage by a factor of 20.

Every economy has established a complex system of laws and institutions intended to protect workers and guarantee a minimum standard of living for its population.

This system encompasses four bodies of law: employment, industrial relations, social security and occupational health and safety laws. Doing Business examines government regulation in the area of employment and social security laws.

Firms consistently rate access to credit as among the greatest barriers to their operation and growth. Doing Business constructs two sets of indicators of how well credit markets function-one on credit registries and the other on legal rights of borrowers and lenders.

If the rights of investors are not protected, majority ownership in a business is the only way to eliminate expropriation. But then investors must devote more oversight attention to fewer investments. The result: entrepreneurship is suppressed, and fewer profitable investment projects are undertaken.

Doing Business compiles procedural requirements for trading a standard shipment of goods by ocean transport. Every official procedure-and the associated documents, time and cost-for importing and exporting the goods is recorded, starting with the contractual agreement between the two parties and ending with delivery of the goods.

In many developing countries bankruptcy is so inefficient that creditors hardly ever use it. In countries such as these, reform would best focus on improving contract enforcement outside bankruptcy.

A new company act eliminated burdensome approvals, introduced a flat registration fee, and made company seals and notaries optional.

Procedures for start-up were cut from eight to five, and the time from 50 days to 39. Sri Lanka also introduced electronic submission of customs declarations, cutting the time for trading by seven days.

Lankan entrepreneur in Dubai to diversify

Ashraf A. Samad Dehiwela Mount Lavinia Special Corr

Some of his creations

A.R. Mohamed Jiffery

A Sri Lankan Entre-preneur, A.R. Mohamed Jiffery who is running RMJ Jewellery and Diamond located at Al Dhahya Area, Diera, Dubai, is to diversify for Digital Technology.

Jiffery originating from Kalmunai set up this limited liability company registered in United Arab Emirates in jewellery diamond business five years ago.

He is also planning to expand his business in various fields and his contribution to the development of business overseas, is a remarkable achievement.

Presently he is a member of Dubai World Gold Council. He also promotes Sri Lankan gems in the Arab communities. Dubai is one of the best places in the world for gold market.

Jiffery is also the chairman of three companies RMJ Company Dubai, Innovate Digital Technology in Colombo 4 and Innovate Computer Business in London. “With this experience I want to get involved in digital technology,” he said.

He is very proud to say that he was born in Kalmunai, Eastern Province. He was selected for University of Moratuwa to study Engineering but he gave up his higher studies and turned to the business field.

He can be contacted on [email protected]

UK’s Brown sees new U.S. alliance

Britain’s Gordon Brown will use his New Year address to call for a “coalition for change” with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in a speech intended as a rallying call to Britons.

Brown, who frequently uses the comparison of the Second World war to describe the current global financial crisis, will tell Britons they have the strength of resolve to tackle a recession.

“Today the issues may be different, more complex, more global. And yet the qualities we need to meet them the British people have demonstrated in abundance before,” Brown says in excerpts of the speech released by his office on Sunday.

“So that we will eventually look back on the winter of 2008 as an other great challenge that was thrown Britain’s way, and that Britain met. Because we had the right values, the right policies, the right character to meet it.”

Brown identifies the economy, climate change, and security as the main challenges facing the world in 2009 and pledges to work with the United States to tackle them, positioning the U.S. alliance beyond a traditional focus on military cooperation.

“I look forward to working with President-elect Obama in creating a transatlantic, and then a global coalition for change,” Brown will say. “We can demonstrate this in 2009 not just in how we address global economic challenges but in how we tackle climate change at the Copenhagen summit.”

World leaders are working to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. pact on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, with talks due to end at a conference in Copenhagen next year.

Brown identifies the economy as the single biggest challenge for 2009 and defends plans for a massive spending boost to prevent a recession spiraling into a slump.

“The failure of British governments in previous downturns was to succumb to political expediency and to cut back investment across the board, thereby stunting our ability to grow and strangling hope during the upturn,” he will say.

LONDON Reuters

South Korea says economy faces unprecedented crisis

South Korea’s economy is in an unprecedented crisis with domestic and overseas demand falling at the same time, but the government will strive to avert an annual decline in exports in 2009, the economy ministry said on Friday.

The Ministry of Knowledge Economy said in its new year policy report to President Lee Myung-bak that it would aim to boost 2009 exports to $450 billion from around $430 billion projected for this year and earn a trade surplus of more than $10 billion.

“The Korean economy is faced with an unprecedented crisis with exports and domestic demand, the two pillars of economic growth, falling at the same time,” the ministry said. But an influential local trade research institute said earlier in the day export prospects for the first quarter of next year looked the worst in at least six years in the face of a deepening global recession.

In November, South Korean exports fell a revised 19 percent from a year earlier, as shipments to the country’s largest market, China, fell by a third over a year earlier, customs agency figures showed last week.

South Korea’s central bank has already warned in its official forecasts that Asia’s fourth-largest economy would grow only 2 percent in 2009, which would be the slowest growth since the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

The Bank of Korea has slashed the policy interest rate by a total of 2.25 percentage points since early October to a record-low 3.0 percent and has pledged to supply sufficient funds into the financial system to shore up the economy.

The economy ministry also said the government would aim to boost foreign direct investment into the country by some 6 percent to $12.5 billion in 2009 from $11.8 billion seen for this year.

The ministry, which is also in charge of energy policy, said state-run Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) would aim to acquire a medium-sized overseas oil company or companies in 2009 to secure more sources of energy supply. South Korea does not produce oil on its territory to feed Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

Reuters.