The UAE leads the world on the ‘ease of registering property’ indicator, part of a new World Bank report that ranks 183 countries globally on key aspects of business regulation for domestic firms.

In the past year, governments in 117 economies carried out 216 regulatory reforms aimed at making it easier to start and operate a business, strengthening transparency and property rights, and improving the efficiency of commercial dispute resolution and bankruptcy procedures, according to the report titled Doing Business 2011: Making a Difference for Entrepreneurs, the eighth in a series of annual reports published by IFC and the World Bank.

Registering property is one of the fundamental requirements for starting and running a business in any part of the world, and it is easiest and speediest to register property in the UAE, the report reveals. “Ensuring formal property rights is fundamental,” the report maintains. “Effective administration of land is part of that. If formal property transfer is too costly or complicated, formal titles might go informal again,” it said.

In that respect, investor protection is high on the agenda in the UAE, with just a single procedure required to register property in the country, compared with the regional average of six procedures.

Moreover, the time taken to register a property in the UAE is just two days – the least in the world. In comparison, the regional average to register property is 32.5 days, which is again the least amongst all the regions in the world.

Time taken to register property in other regions of the world averages higher than the Mena region, with registration period averaging 86.7 days in East Asia and Pacific region and a mind-boggling 99.8 days in South Asia. At 32.7 days, even the developed OECD countries have a higher average than the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.

In addition, the cost of registering property in the UAE is also very competitive, according to the report, amounting to two per cent of the property value, compared with the regional average of 5.7 per cent.

“Doing Business records the full sequence of procedures necessary for a business to purchase a property from another business and transfer the property title to the buyer’s name,” the report said. In the past six years, 105 economies undertook 146 reforms making it easier to transfer property, it added.

“Globally, the time to transfer property fell by 38 per cent and the cost by 10 per cent over this time. The most popular feature of property registration reform in these six years, implemented in 52 economies, was lowering transfer taxes and government fees,” the report maintained.

Overall, the report highlights that, in the past year, 11 of 18 economies in the Mena region adopted a total of 22 business regulation reforms to create opportunity for domestic entrepreneurs.

Trade facilitation was high on the priority list. Six economies in the region, including the UAE, modernised customs procedures and port infrastructure — Bahrain, the Arab Republic of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and West Bank and Gaza. Also popular was improving credit information systems, which occurred in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the UAE.

Lauding some of the steps undertaken by the UAE during the past 12 months, the World Bank report said: “The UAE enhanced access to credit by setting up a legal framework for the operation of the private credit bureau and requiring that financial institutions share credit information.”

It added: “In trade, document preparation was streamlined, and the launch of Dubai Customs’ comprehensive new customs system, Mirsal 2, reduced the time required for trading.” Globally, for the fifth year running, Singapore leads in the ease of doing business, followed by Hong Kong SAR China, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US. 

Among the top 25 economies, 18 made things even easier over the past year, the report said. The UAE is ranked 40th in the world, out of 183 economies, and third in the region, out of 18 economies, behind Saudi Arabia (global rank: 11) and Bahrain (28).