London perspective 2: World business climate rankings
An article in the Times caught my eye: a league table of  national business climate from the University of Munich’s Ifo Institute for Economic Research, which ranks advanced economies based on an analysis of governments’ impact on business activity and growth. Led by Australia, the Anglo countries top the chart (noting the Netherlands in 3rd place), followed by the Nordics. My New Zealand and Finnish readers will be pleased to see their countries receive special praise in the report. We all moan about red tape, but on the whole, it’s not as bad as elsewhere.
Everywhere I go, however, there is one universal gripe - planning controls. Right now, there’s a parallel debate in Britain and New Zealand on reforming planning controls to enable nationally important infrastructure to be built. In Britain, the debate goes further - the government wants to simplify all town planning to eliminate time-consuming and costly bureaucracy and vexatious challenges which, in the main, only slow down, not stop, development Controls will still exist to protect certain aspects of the environment, and enable community consultation. Needless to say, the debate is vociferous in both countries.
Anyway, for the league table junkies amongst you, here are the Ifo rankings:
- Australia
- US
- Netherlands
- Canada
- Ireland
- UK
- New Zealand
- Finland
- Denmark
- Germany
- Switzerland
- Norway
- Sweden
- Japan
- Austria
- Belgium
- Spain
- Portugal
- France
- Greece
- South Korea
- Italy
- Mexico
- Turkey
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