Weekly Chart: Doing Business 2017's Movers and Shakers

Two hundred eighty-nine days. That’s how long it took a group of economic researchers in Lima, Peru, in 1983 to get all the permits needed to open up a small garment shop. The goal, said researchers, was to incentivize local government to streamline the process, and in so doing, encourage economic growth.

It was the idea behind this study that led to the World Bank’s Doing Business report, now in its fourteenth year. The 2017 edition, released in late October, ranks 190 countries and territories across the globe based on 10 factors: starting a business, paying taxes, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, trading across borders, resolving insolvency, and enforcing contracts.

This year’s report added a gender component for the first time, drawing on data from the bank’s Women, Business, and the Law report. Among other things, this round of Doing Business found that Chile has the distinction of being the only OECD economy with restrictions on women starting a business, as married women have fewer property rights under the law than do married men.

If you want to start a business in Latin America or in the Caribbean, where will you run into the least red tape? Jamaica, where the government also made it easier to file taxes and process export compliance documents in the last year. In other bright spots, Peru and Guatemala both lowered their corporate income tax rates, while Mexico and Uruguay implemented technology to bring land titling and social security contributions systems, respectively, online. Argentina and Brazil continue to lag in the bottom half of the rankings, due largely to difficulties paying taxes and dealing with construction permits.