Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs, a World Bank Group flagship report, the 15th in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, was released on 31 October 2017. Doing Business measures regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking.
Serbia made significant improvements in its business regulations, which resulted in improvement of its ranking from 47 in 2017 to 43 in 2018. According to the report, Serbia made starting a business easier by reducing the signature certification fee and increasing the efficiency of the registry, reducing the time for business registration. Serbia improved the reliability of its land administration system by implementing a geographic information system. Finally, Serbia made enforcing contracts easier by adopting a new enforcement law that broadens and clarifies the responsibilities of enforcement agents as well as the powers of the courts during the enforcement process.
Živković Samardžić, one of the Serbia’s leading law firms is World Bank’s local partner on the Doing Business project. Živković Samardžić lawyers who contributed to the Doing Business 2018 report were partners Uroš Djordjević and Jovana Tomić, of counsel Miloš Živković, senior associate Igor Živkovski, associates Sonja Šehovac and Miloš Ilić and trainee attorney Neda Spajić.
The full report and accompanying datasets are available at: