Shanghai leads in 22 World Bank business environment gauges

Among the 59 gauges that the World Bank has used to measure the business environment, Shanghai has reached the best level for 22 gauges, according to the latest WB report.

The discoveries were part of the WB's Enterprise Surveys Country Profile China 2025.

This shows that Shanghai has made substantial progress in terms of aligning with international standards, optimizing rules and regulations, optimizing government services and improving companies' operation efficiency, said Luo Peixin, deputy head of East China University of Political Science and Law.

Yao Weiqun, executive director of the Shanghai Institute for Strategy of the International Trade Center, further explained that Shanghai-based enterprises gave an average score of 99.13 for the gauge of international trade, higher than the 89.1 score in Singapore. It means that Shanghai companies have high recognition of the city's customs services and the implementation of trade regulations, he said.

The government bodies in Shanghai have conducted special programs for seven consecutive years to optimize procedures, improve efficiency and lower costs for cross-border trade. Up to 173 reform measures have been introduced over the past few years, said Yao.

Under closer scrutiny, Shanghai companies gave a score of zero under the gauge of power outage. The e-payment costs in Shanghai is zero. These surveyed companies gave an average score of 96.2 for the experiences of changing internet service providers. The city scored 100 when it comes to the substitution of commercial dispute resolution. Shanghai has reached the world's top level for all these gauges, according to the WB report.

Shanghai has also reached the world's leading level in terms of tax payment time, loan application time, internet stability and the accessibility of government procurement and bidding.

Singapore reached the best level for 10 gauges. The country ranked second in WB's Doing Business evaluation. It dislodged all the first batch of economies surveyed for the WB's Business-Ready report.

As Luo of East China University of Political Science and Law explained, these achievements are closely related to Shanghai's continued efforts to advance institutional reform. For example, the stable power supply in Shanghai can be largely attributed to the city's power supply provisions that went into effect in 2016. When an outage is reported, power supply companies should arrive at the scene within 60 to 90 minutes, according to the provisions.

Shanghai has been coming up with related rules and regulations to better connect to the internationally accepted practices. With the first action plan to improve the city's business environment in 2018, Shanghai has seen the plan upgraded to the 8th edition this year. A total of 1,101 measures have been introduced via the plans to facilitate the development of local companies.

The municipal government has recently set 10 major missions to seek further breakthroughs in improving the business environment. A press conference is scheduled on Thursday to elaborate on the missions.