You can download the full Report for 2019 at the following link: Doing Business 2019.

This year presentation of Doing Business 2019 for Serbia took place in Belgrade on 31^st October 2018 at Crowne Plaza hotel.

The special guest of the conference was former Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Georgia Mr Nika Gilauri who presented the reform achievements of this country in the conversation with Thomas Lubeck, regional IFC manager, who ranked Georgia among top 10 in the Doing Business list.

In terms of tax reform, Mr Gilauri highlighted that Georgia slashed the number of taxes from 21 to 6, and then to 5 and cut down tax rate of every single tax. They also simplified tax procedures and tax compliance, and got rid of double interpretations of tax regulation. He illustrated this situation with one example before tax reform: if someone wanted to import sport shoes in Georgia, custom duty was 30%, if someone wanted to import sneakers, custom duty was 0%. In this case, almost everybody imported as sneakers, subject probably to high corruption.

Doing Business 2019 report covered changes in 2017/2018. Doing Business rank of Serbia for 2018 was 48 out of 190 countries, which represents decrease of 5 positions, although in terms of points obtained in 2019 compared to 2018, Serbia has made progress from 73.13 to 73.49 points. These figures show that although Serbia has made the slight progress, other counties have made faster reforms.

The Paying taxes indicator for Serbia showed increase of in 3 positions, from 82^nd to 79^th position (in points increase from 73.63 to 74.75).

Comparable figures for Serbia in 2018 and 2019:

Since its launch in 2003, Doing Business has inspired more than 3,500 reforms in the 10 areas of business regulation measured by the report. This year, we observed a peak in reform activity worldwide—128 economies undertook a record 314 reforms in 2017/18. Around the world, registering a business now takes an average of 20 days and costs 23% of income per capita, compared to 47 days and 76% of income per capita in 2006. Even more telling, today the average paid-in minimum capital that entrepreneurs must deposit is 6% of income per capita, compared with 145% of income per capita in 2006. The global average time to prepare, file and pay taxes has fallen from 324 hours in 2005 to 237 hours in 2017.

The paying taxes indicator set tracks changes related to the different taxes and mandatory contributions that a medium-size company must pay in a given year, the administrative burden of paying taxes and contributions and the administrative burden of complying with two postfiling processes (VAT refund, and tax audit).