(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) Oman made a significant move upward in Bloomberg's 2014 Best Countries for Doing Business rankings, climbing by 12 spots to 43rd in the world, from 55th place in the previous year's ranking.
The rating, Bloomberg's annual list of countries most attractive for running a business, gave Oman a 61.6-point score out of 100, based on six broad criteria - the degree of economic integration, the cost of setting up a business, the cost of labour and materials, the cost of moving goods, the readiness of the local consumer base and less-tangible costs.
Hong Kong retained its place atop the list with a rating score of 83.4, followed by Canada and the US. Oman shared 43rd place with Russia.
Oman bettered its overall score in the ranking through improvements in 'the cost of moving goods' category, which includes import and export
Efficiencies, transportation efficiency, logistics performance, liner shipping connectivity, and quality of port infrastructure.
The sultanate also improved its score in the 'less-tangible costs' category, which includes the corruption perception index, international property rights index, inflation, various taxation concerns, and accounting adaptability.
''The environment for doing business in Oman ranks favourably at the international level. Oman has positively improved its position and is continuing to improve further. The climb in global rankings should be encouraging to do more in the areas that require more attention,'' said Dr Fabio Scacciavillani, chief economist at the Oman Investment Fund.
He said that the business-friendly environment at Oman's freezones and improvement in ports, airports, roads and logistics infrastructure will further help Oman to improve its global rankings. ''Oman's other major strengths for doing business are easy taxation, low inflation and safety and security,'' added Dr Scacciavillani.
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Oman came in at fourth place in Bloomberg's ‘Doing Business' ranking behind the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but ahead of Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait among the GCC countries.
The UAE's ranking dropped to 23rd place this year from 17th place last year, while Saudi Arabia jumped to 36th place this year from 42nd last year. Qatar witnessed a sharp fall from its 27th rank last year to 46th place this year. For the third year in a row, Bloomberg's rankings represents its exclusive analysis of the world's most attractive countries for business according to 2013 data. To rank the top 50 countries, Bloomberg analysed 157 countries. A similar Doing Business rating by the World Bank ranked Oman at 47th place out of 189 countries for 201
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.