Azerbaijan, Baku, 18 April /corr. Trend I.Khalilova/ To continue the work with the Government of Azerbaijan in improving country's position in the ranking of the World Bank, which assesses the simplicity of business establishment, the author of 'Doing Business 2008' report of the World Bank and International Financial Corporation (IFC), Semion Dyankov, is on two days visit to Azerbaijan, a source at WB Baku Office said.
According to him, the Presidential order on several measures developing entrepreneurship dated on 30 April 2007 played a significant role in improving the business climate of the country. He highly assessed the simplification of the business registration system, improvement of the tax policy and measures on registration of the real estate. Azerbaijan may join the list of ten reformer-countries in the next year if it continues works on simplification and protection of investments, preparation of passports for construction, allocation of land plots and other reforms.
During the meeting at Azerbaijan's Ministry of Economic Development, the Minister Heydar Babayev, informed of establishment of various activities of entrepreneurs according to the principle of 'single window', privilege loans through National Fund for entrepreneurship development and privileges for the farmers. Creating special economic zones is also one of the directions of State support for entrepreneurship. According to the Minister, works are continued to organize the first industrial town, business incubators and network of business centers in Azerbaijan in order to create market infrastructure for the entrepreneurs.
As a result of introduction of the 'single window' (from 1 Jan 2008 the Taxes Ministry became only registration organization), the period of business registration decreased from 72 days to 3 days and number of procedures from 15 to 5.
According to the international practice and requirements of the report on business-climate, opening the banking account and notary registration should take place within a single day. Azerbaijan occupies 96th place in this regard.
As a result of simplification of the procedure, the number of registered legal entities is expected to increase up to 10-15,000 annually. Up till now, their number did not exceed 4-5,000 and 20-30,000 are physical entities.
At present, more than 70,000 enterprises and more than 200,000 individual entrepreneurs have been registered in the Republic.
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