In its 2017 Doing Business report, the World Bank compared business regulations for domestic firms in 190 countries. The Czech Republic ranked 27th in the overall ranking, down one place compared with the previous year.

The Czech Republic improved online procedures in 2015/2016 and this helped to reduce the time needed to set up a business. The country made starting a business easier by reducing the cost and the time required to register a company in commercial courts by allowing notaries to directly register companies through an online system, the report says. it generally takes 9 days (8 procedures) to start a business (compared with 15 days/8 procedures in the previous year). Therefore, in the Starting a business category, the Czech Republic moved up 7 places from 88th to 81st place.

Also, in 2015, the average total duration of power outages in Prague was 0.49 hours per customer and the average number of outages experienced by a customer was 0.33. There was less than one outage a year per customer, for a total duration of less than one hour and rthe Czech Republic thus received high scores on the reliability of supply and transparency of tariffs index. The country made getting electricity faster by designating personnel to deal with all incoming connection applications, the report says.

Generally, in the Czech Republic, it takes 247 days (21 procedures) to deal with construction permit (rank 130 out of 190 countries, down two places), and 28 days (4 procedures) to register property (rank 30 out of 190, up 7 places), the report shows. 

With 8 tax payments due per year (no change from previous year) and 234 hours (compared with 405 hours in the previous year (- but the methodology has changed and some tasks for taxpayers were excluded from the bulk or shifted into a different one, PwC Czech Republic Tax Partner Peter Chrenko explains-) per year spent on all procedures, the country ranks 53rd in the Paying taxes category. In the Enforcing contracts category, the country ranks 68th, with 611 days as an average time needed for the enforcement.

In the Resolving insolvency category, the Czech Republic ranks 26th, down from rank 22 in the previous year. Failure is part of taking risks and innovating. For people to be willing to start a new business there needs to be a well-developed system in place for closing businesses that do not succeed. In addition to the complicated entry process in Argentina, if the business fails only 23 cents on the dollar are recovered after going through an insolvency proceeding. By contrast, in the Czech Republic the same business failure would have a recovery rate of 67 cents on the dollar. This higher recovery rate also helps to explain the larger number of new businesses in Prague (at 3.42 formal new businesses per 1,000 adults) than in Buenos Aires, the report says.

Also, the report mentions that there are 110 economies worldwide that have at least one authority that reports repayment history from financing corporations and leasing companies. OECD high-income economies have the highest proportion of such economies (84%), followed by Europe and Central Asia (76%), Latin America and the Caribbean (63%), East Asia and the Pacific (60%), Middle East and North Africa (60%), South Asia (50%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (27%). The Czech Republic’s credit bureau, CRIF, set up a non-banking bureau in 2005, covering leasing and sales data that were not available in the banking registers. The price for using these data varies according to the type of company—for example, different prices apply to providers of small consumer credits and car leasing companies.

Since 2010, the Czech Republic has been moving closer to the “frontier,” which represents the best performance observed on each of the indicators across all economies, closing the gap most successfully in categories Trading across orders, Getting electricity and Starting a business.

The country economic data are available here, graphics attached.

Statement by the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade.