Singapore, best place in the world to start a small business...

Singapore, New Zealand and the United States have the world's friendliest business climates for small companies, according to a World Bank report released this week. 

For the fourth year in a row, those three countries occupied the top spots in the annual "Doing Business" report card created by the World Bank and its private-sector lending arm, the International Finance Corp. The 2009 edition ranks 181 countries on their small-business regulatory environments. 

Compiled with the help of 6,700 business experts and government officials around the world, "Doing Business 2009" analyzes how difficult it is to comply with 10 different sets of business regulations that affect company lifecycles, from startup to closure. The World Bank's research team examined the number of procedures required to start a business and the ease and cost of transactions such as obtaining construction permits, hiring workers, getting credit, paying taxes, enforcing contracts and declaring bankruptcy. Each category is given equal weight to create an overall "ease of doing business" index and ranking. More...

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