Where can you set up a business quickly? These are the top countries for getting start-ups off the the ground
Entrepreneurs looking to set up a new business as quickly as possible will have most luck in New Zealand or Macedonia, figures from Approved Index show.
By studying 2015 World Bank data to find out how long it takes to legally launch a new company in each country, they found that only in these two is it possible to get the whole process completed in one day or less.
This is a lot faster than the global average of 20 days, although most developed nations are able to get a start-up off the ground relatively speedily. Canada can take as little as two days, while Australia and Portugal can take three.
Also fast but not fast enough to make it into the top 10 is the UK, where people can call themselves business owners within five days. This puts it slightly ahead of the US, where it takes a minimum of six days.
Reading these figures, the considerably higher global average time might seem excessively high, but this is because the average has been dragged down by some of the less developed nations. In China, for example, it usually takes 31 days to set up a business, while in Brazil – Latin America's biggest economy – it takes a huge 83 days.
The country with the longest waiting time, however, is Venezuela, where it can easily reach five months.
