Starting a Business in the Caribbean
Date issued
May 2019
Subject
Business Development;
Political Economy;
Capital Requirement;
Entrepreneurship
JEL code
P48 - Political Economy • Legal Institutions • Property Rights • Natural Resources • Energy • Environment • Regional Studies;
L10 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance: General;
L51 - Economics of Regulation
Category
Policy Briefs
According to the World Bank’s Doing Business report, most Caribbean countries have made starting a business much easier in recent years. This is the result of changes in regulations and in the implementation of new reforms for business registration over time. However, despite reducing the time and cost needed to register a company, the international ranking of most Caribbean countries fell, as other countries made registering even easier. Nevertheless, registering a company has become easy enough that further reforms to shorten the time or reduce costs are not crucial. Given the past progress, it is preferable to study the registration process and the quality of the business registry to assess whether further simplification is warranted, or the quality of the business registration should be improved.