Kenya up 19 places in World Bank ease of doing business ranking

Kenya maintained its strong business reform agenda, carrying out five key reforms in the past year to improve the business climate for small and medium-sized businesses, says the World Bank Group’s Doing Business report.

The reforms raised Kenya to 61st place in the global ease of doing a business ranking, from a rank of 80 last year, earning the country a spot among the global top improvers for the fourth time in the past 11 years.

“In recent years, Kenya has embraced a strong reform agenda aimed at boosting investment and creating jobs.  During this past year, Kenya has once again showcased itself as one of the global leaders in adopting international best practices in business regulation,” said the report released yesterday.

“While this is a great accomplishment which we must celebrate, I also encourage the government to persist in its efforts to address the remaining hurdles that affect the establishment and growth of SMEs in the country, a segment that is critical to the creation of more jobs and opportunities for Kenyan youth,” said World Bank Kenya Country Director Felipe Jaramillo.

The reforms of the past year included making registering property easier by introducing an online system to pay fees and obtain digital certificates. As a result, the time for a business to register a property transfer has been reduced to 49 days from 61 days, according to the report.

Kenya strengthened access to credit by introducing a new law on secured transactions that created a unified secured transactions legal framework. It also established a new unified and notice-based collateral registry.

In the getting credit area, Kenya advanced to a global rank of eight this year, from 29 the previous year.