The Easiest Countries to Start-up a Business (51 to 100)

The ease of doing business index is an index created by the world bank. A high rank indicates simpler, better regulations for businesses and better law enforcement and property rights. The index is calculated based on laws and regulations, with the participation of thousands of government officials and worldwide independant consultants. Many factors are taken into account for defining a rank:

- Procedures, times, cost and capital required to start up a new business
- Dealing with permits in general, construction permits, procedures, time and cost
- Employment issues, ease of recruitment, labor cost and laws
- Registering property: procedures, time and cost
- Ease of getting banking facilities and credits
- Investors protection and law enforcement
- Tax rates
- Import and export facilities


RANKING:

51- Bulgaria
52- Botswana
53- Saint Lucia
54- Azerbaidjan
55- Tunisia
56- Romania
57- Oman
58- Rwanda
59- Kazakhstan
60- Vanuatu
61- Samoa
62- Fiji
63- Czech Republic
64- Antigua and Barbuda
65- Turkey
66- Montenegro 
67- Ghana
68- Belarus
69- Namibia
70- Poland
71- Tonga
72- Panama
73- Mongolia
74- Kuwait
75- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
76- Zambia
77- Bahamas
78- Vietnam
79- China
80- Italy
81- Jamaica
82- Albania
83- Pakistan
84- Croatia
85- Maldives
86- El Salvador
87- Saint Kitts and Nevis
88- Dominica
89- Serbia
90- Moldova 
91- Dominican Republic
92- Grenada
93- Kiribati
94- Egypt
95- Seychelles
96- Solomon Islands
97- Trinidad and Tobago 
98- Kenya
99- Belize
100- Guyana

The Easiest Countries to Start-up a Business (1 to 50)

The ease of doing business index is an index created by the world bank. A high rank indicates simpler, better regulations for businesses and better law enforcement and property rights. The index is calculated based on laws and regulations, with the participation of thousands of government officials and worldwide independent consultants. Many factors are taken into account for defining a rank:

- Procedures, times, cost and capital required to start up a new business
- Dealing with permits in general, construction permits, procedures, time and cost
- Employment issues, ease of recruitment, labor cost and laws
- Registering property: procedures, time and cost
- Ease of getting banking facilities and credits
- Investors protection and law enforcement
- Tax rates
- Import and export facilities


RANKING:

1- Singapore
2- Hong Kong
3- New Zealand
4- United Kingdom
5- United States
6- Denmark
7- Canada
8- Norway
9- Ireland
10- Australia
11- Saudi Arabia
12- Georgia
13- Finland
14- Sweden
15- Iceland
16- South Korea
17- Estonia
18- Japan
19- Thailand
20- Mauritius
21- Malaysia
22- Germany
23- Lithuania
24- Latvia
25- Belgium
26- France
27- Switzerland
28- Bahrain
29- Israel
30- Netherlands
31- Portugal
32- Austria
33- Taiwan
34- South Africa
35- Mexico
36- Peru
37- Cyprus
38- Macedonia
39- Colombia
40- United Arab Emirates
41- Slovakia
42- Slovenia
43- Chile
44- Kyrgyzstan
45- Luxembourg
46- Hungary
47- Puerto Rico
48- Armenia
49- Spain
50- Qatar

Good reasons to invest in Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has proven throughout the years to be one of the favourite and most profitable places in the world to invest in. In fact the KSA has been gaining ranks at the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) especially when it comes to the relative ease of establishing and starting up a new business or investment.

Many reasons have contributed to such developments:

Legal forces:

The KSA has gained stability in the region, along with a well structured legal system, political stability and international support, which provide to businessmen and entrepreneurs a very safe environment to invest in.


Demographic-economic forces:

- Saudi Arabia is the richest country in the Middle East and the Muslim world. This is because Saudi Arabia holds one of the world's largest proven oil reserves.
Residents from diverse cultures and background constitute Saudi complex society. Highly ranked executives, middle management employees, global investors, powerful entrepreneurs, these are the added value to such strong economy.

- The principal growth sectors are energy production and manufacturing, yet high-class tourism and international finance are the new sectors that are booming.

- The SAGIA (Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority) which is in the process of building an additional four mega economic cities around the kingdom, these cities represent the best environment for foreign businessmen and entrepreneurs to start up their own business with a 100% ownership.

- The CMA (Capital Markets Authority) that offers 100% foreign ownership, and a tailor-made financial regulatory system with laws taken from best practices in other leading financial centers like New York, London, and Singapore.

- The GDP (Growth Domestic Product) per capita is in a constant development.


Technological:

Saudi Arabia has a current strong emphasis on technological advancement; it creates a good opportunity for all entrepreneurs and global investors to start up their business in such environment.
On a financial view, technology plays an important role especially in the field of telecommunications, computing and advanced software improving the quality of services and returns to clients.


Social-Cultural:

Immigrants make up a large percentage of the Saudi workforce, which creates healthy social interrelations.
Hence, traditional forms of art and culture are preserved, diversification is however evident.

Potential Customers & investors:

Saudi Arabia's society offers the opportunity to target potential clients that would be interested in investments such as entrepreneurs, investors, high classed executives and wealthy individuals, which can prove the high growth of such commodities in the Saudi markets.

Would you invest in a fund based only on Twitter?

Twitter has become a social networking phenomenon, with more than 200 million users around the world, and more than 10 million daily users. A European hedge fund is planning to harness the power of Twitter by making investment decisions based on real-time messages, known as tweets. The founder of the fund along with a University professor, claim they can predict market directions based on Twitter trends and the various moods of tweets, which are 140 characters or less.

Using proprietary technology, the fund will monitor tweets and sort them into several categories, such as calm, alert or happy. According to analysts, the idea rather makes sense since markets generally reflect the mood of the investors, and with such large number of daily users on Twitter, the mood inspired from the tweets (which is a considerable representative sample) will provide a good assumption about the actual general mood of the investors and the markets around the world.

The idea is still being debated and the question is whether the fund owners will succeed in convincing investors about their project, and therefore be able to raise sufficient funds to meet the launching threshold of this avant-guardist new hedge fund.

One thing is sure: if only by using Twitter to predict the market movements this hedge fund can perform well, and consequently generate profits for on-board investors, many others will follow this business model and will start using the same tool for their new investments. It will be a new era for Twitter as well which might see its popularity growing further and its company valuation flying high.

Is Egypt the new China of the Middle East?

Egypt, country of the Nile and one of the oldest civilizations in the world, has always been the epicentre of history, culture, and changes. On the verge of one of the most important changes in its recent history, the home of the pharaohs looks at a bright and promising future. In fact, Should the new Egyptian regime succeed in realizing a "real change" in the country, a lot of potential awaits to be unleashed out of the egyptian economy which has several strong foundations.

The availability of cheap labor, the cheapest in the region and probably one of the cheapest in the world, backed by a population of more than 80 million egyptian, with an average GDP per capita among the lowest in the world (around 5,000 USD per year), the active population will have no problem at all competing with any country in the region, if not in the world since the labor cost in countries like India or China is comparable to the one in Egypt.

The egyptian population has another important component: the middle class, which is highly educated and qualified in most cases, fluent in French and English, helping to make commercial and trading activity relatively easy with western counterparts, unlike many countries in the Far East where only the national language is spoken. Besides all, egyptian people are so funny and very humble. 

Geographically, Egypt is at the center of the Middle East at the proximity of one of the biggest oil producers in the world, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and is also very close to Europe, which makes import & export activities to the euro-zone and de facto to the industrialized nations very convenient and time-saving.

Strategically, the Suez canal insures the sea traffic between the Far East, India and Saudi Arabia to Europe and the United States. Therefore, the strategic dependance of Egypt on other States is much less than other countries when it comes to exercise normally its commercial activities.

The country possesses substantial proven reserves of natural gas and is one of the exporters of this commodity to several countries in the region. This would bring down dramatically the production costs for eventual manufacturing or industrial activities. 

The considerable amount of funds that are expected to be retrieved from the old regime will undoubtedly bring a considerable boost to the economy, in fact around 70 billion US dollars are estimated to be heading back for the Egyptian treasury in the near future, and that would represent a surplus of funds equivalent to the government's budget for two years. Such amounts could be used to upgrade the country's infrastructure which is necessary for the economy to flourish. 

Egypt has all the necessary elements to become a big economy, the biggest in the region. All the ingredients of the chinese model are available in abundance to the egyptian people who has done a lot so far, and still have a lot more to do in the near future.

Airbus: the enemy

By Nidal Raad.

Before 1970, more than 90% of the world's commercial airplanes were exclusively produced by Boeing, a company who made aviation history, notably during world war II, when it was still producing military aircraft solely, it contributed to the end of the war thanks to legendary bombers such as the B-25 fortress and B-29 superfortress and others. Then after the war Boeing started to build commercial aircraft and in the 1950's the company introduced the best seller Boeing 707 and in 1969 the Boeing 747: the famous jumbo jet, both models having flewn the world for decades. Boeing was comfortably the biggest aircraft maker in the world.

Then in 1970 everything began to change. A group of brilliant French engineers came up with a new design for a "twin engine medium size carrier" which they called A300. The idea of twin engines for a medium size long courier aircraft was perceived by many as bound to failure, since in the 70's quadruple engines for a long courier inspired more security. After a successful first flight, the A300 began accumulating successes not only on the technical level since it was very advanced technologically, but also on the operational level; In fact it was more fuel efficient than the B707 by 20%. Airbus was born thanks to the large number of orders for the new A300 which exceeded 800 planes. The French company became quickly a confirmed aircraft maker.  

Airbus A320 neo 

In the 1980's Airbus turned it's attention to the small aircraft sector (100 to 150 seats) and introduced the ultra sophisticated A320 in 1987. It was the first ever aircraft to utilize the "fly by wire" technology, which allowed engineers to remove definitely the third function on aircraft cockpits: the flight engineer. Airbus stated at the time that the aircraft was so automated and ahead of it's time to the point that theoretically only one pilot would be needed to fly it safely. It was also the first ever commercial jet able to perform "auto landings". Boeing was then beginning to lose the race as it was producing a rival B737, a very popular aircraft but relatively old.

The 1990's were the expansion years for Airbus as it was entering and acquiring new markets every year. Unfortunately the success of the French maker was all at the expenses of the US giant who was consistently losing market shares and large orders from airlines. In 1995 Airbus introduced the mid size - long range A330 family aircraft while Boeing introduced the larger size - long range B777. Both models were very successful, Airbus won around 1,200 orders for the A330 family and Boeing won around 1,000 orders for the B777.

Boeing 787 "Dreamliner"

In the early years of the new millennium the two aviation giants had different views about the future of aviation. While Boeing was working hard on a new mid size - long range aircraft, Airbus was drafting the project of the world's biggest ever commercial aircraft. Boeing's study was based on the facts that airlines will be in need of medium size, super advanced, ultra efficient and economical aircraft . Airbus thinking was much simpler: with airports becoming busier everyday and the number of passengers growing relatively fast, the need will be to provide a "gross transportation" way to cope with the growing traffic.

Boeing started to build the new generation B787 which is still under testing and is almost 3 years behind schedule, Airbus started to build the A380 the biggest ever passenger aircraft having a double deck which entered into service in 2007. That year was very significant for Airbus since it was the first time ever when the number of orders for Airbus planes surpassed the number of orders for Boeing planes. Airbus became officially the largest commercial aircraft maker in the world. 

 Airbus A380

It should be noted that Boeing tried to catch up with the success of the A380 by developing a new larger version of the B747 : the B747-8 Intercontinental, but the plane hasn't been so popular and was only able to attract 30 orders, 20 of them from Lufthansa which is thought to have placed such an order to gain more traffic rights in the US skies since the German carrier is well established in the US.

On the other hand Airbus is developing the new A350, a direct competitor to the Boeing 787 dreamliner, the A350 is scheduled to enter into service by the end of 2013.

With time, the huge loss of market share prompted Boeing in 2005 to file a lawsuit at the World Trade Organization against Airbus, accusing the European Company of benefiting from illegal government loans. Airbus responded by filing a similar lawsuit against Boeing with the same charges. The latest statement from the WTO showed that both parties have indeed benefited from government loans, which brings back the battle to breakeven. it is clear that such matter will take many years to be concluded.

Enemy or competitor, Airbus has seduced the world of air-travel and has gained respect of the world's airlines who fly Airbus aircraft on hourly basis, daily, worldwide. it's lifetime rival Boeing does not enjoy less respect from airlines nor is it less popular, but the difference is that Boeing has been losing ground to Airbus for the last 40 years, while Airbus has been moving forward. 

The secret of the Swiss Franc

The Swiss Franc has been outperforming all other major currencies in the past weeks/months. The main reason behind this appreciation is mainly due to the intriguing country behind this currency (switzerland) which has been playing the role of "safe deposit" of the world for several decades. It is believed that more than 30% of the world's wealth is deposited at Swiss Banks, a country with only 6.5 million citizens but also with more than 500 operational banks and major financial institutions. The famous Swiss banking secrecy has largely contributed to such facts, in addition to Swiss banks which have recently proved to be "facilitators" for the opening and funding of big offshore accounts in Switzerland for non-Swiss citizens and residents. 

The Swiss banking secrecy is a Swiss law ratified by the Swiss parliament. It prohibits the disclosure of any information related to Swiss bank accounts, whether it is the identity of a client, the nature of an account, or the cash balance involved. The system is so strict that any lift of the banking secrecy on any Swiss account would require a judgment from a Swiss judge in a Swiss tribunal.

Recent Geopolitical events, especially in the Middle East and North Africa have also suggested that the US dollar has lost its status as the most important safe haven currency in times of crisis. In fact it has been depreciating against all major currencies and commodities, reaching all time highs against gold, silver, the Canadian dollar and the Swiss Franc.

It is true that a strong currency puts the Swiss economy in a better position to cope with rising inflation, mainly generated from high oil prices and commodities, but this appreciation of the Swiss Franc comes to a high price: the industry. In fact Mr. Amman the Swiss minister of the economy has reiterated on several occasions that measures will be taken to protect the Swiss industry which is going to see it's export prices rising phenomenonly in the coming months.

Whether it is good or bad for any country to have a strong currency, will remain a question of balance. What we have seen over the years suggests clearly that currency prices abide by a cyclical pattern where extreme prices are unlikely to be sustained for long.