High marks for Botswana and Namibia in ‘Doing Business’ survey

Want to set up a cargo transport or other business in a BLSN country? Botswana remains your best bet with fewer headaches, cheaper costs and fewer delays than Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland. But SA readers of the World Bank and International Finance Corporation’s “Doing Business in 2011” report may end up thinking “There’s no place like home.” For instance, of the 183 economies surveyed for the annual report, Botswana and Namibia rank relatively high on the overall “ease of doing business” scale, placing at 52 and 69 respectively. (Swaziland ranks 118 and Lesotho ranks 138.) However, SA ranks 34 and is amongst the world’s top ten countries when it comes to protecting investors. The World Bank commends Swaziland for improving its protections for investors more than any other nation last year, but the country still ranks 120, compared to 74 for Namibia and 44 for Botswana. (Lesotho ranks 138). Want to start a business? In Botswana, 10 procedures are required that will consume 61 working days. Lesotho requires seven procedures that take 40 days, but it’s costly – ten times more expensive than Botswana to start a business there. In Namibia, 12 procedures are needed, taking 66 days. While 12 procedures are required in Swaziland, these take fewer days (56). By contrast, starting a business in SA requires six procedures over 22 days, and closing a business takes two years. Obtaining construction permits takes 12 procedures, but this consumes 174 days, giving SA a ranking in this category below Swaziland and Namibia. SA’s six procedures needed to register property consume 24 days. For cargo transporters and clearing and forwarding agents, the key indicator may be ease of cross-border trading. Here, unexpectedly, SA does worse than Swaziland, and none of the countries in this article do better than Lesotho, which requires six documents for exporting and eight for importing, while cost per exported container is US $1680 and cost per imported container is $1610. In Swaziland seven export documents are needed to ship a container at $1754, and ten documents to import a container at $1849. In SA eight export documents are needed to send a container off at a cost of $1531 and nine documents are required to import a container at $1807. (The report calculates it takes 30 days to ship something out of SA and 35 days to ship something in, compared to Swaziland’s 18 days to export and 27 days to import.) In Namibia, 11 documents are needed for export, and cost per exported container is $1686. For importing, it’s nine documents, and cost per imported container is $1813. Botswana importers and exporters may have less paperwork to contend with, but costs are double those of SA. Six export documents are needed to ship out a container costing $3010, while nine import documents must be completed to bring in a container costing $3390 Are • your own experiences consistent with the World Bank findings, or do you have an easier/harder time and greater/lesser expenses than the data presented in the report? Email your comments to joyo@nowmedia. co.za.