Cape Verde fell six slots in the 2009 Doing Business report, which has just been released by the World Bank. The country comes in 143rd among 181 countries in terms of the ease of doing business.

Alterations in the labor outlook considered harmful to businesses were the main reason for the drop in the score registered by Cape Verde, which last year was the best-positioned Portuguese-speaking African country (137th place), according to the report released Wednesday in the United States.

Among the ten items evaluated by the World Bank economists, property registration, payment of taxes and the fulfillment of contracts were the only areas that saw improvement in Cape Verde.

In the study, which evaluates the relative ease of business activities in procedures such as opening businesses and paying taxes, the only considerable variation among Africa’s Portuguese-speaking countries was registered by Cape Verde.

Ghana and Kenya were the only two countries on the continent included on the list of the ten most reform-minded nations. Guinea Bissau remained only two slots above the bottom of the list (179th place), behind São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola, both of which went up one slot, to 176th and 168th place, respectively.

In 2007, Mozambique was among the countries that received the greatest deal of praise from the World Bank, but this year dropped two positions, to 141th place, even though it continues to be among the most reform-oriented countries on the continent. On the whole, sub-Saharan Africa is by far the world’s worst region in terms of business activities, and the impetus for reform is considerably below that registered in the countries of Central Asia or Eastern Europe, stresses the World Bank.

Source: A Semana