Malaysia falls one notch in competitiveness ranking

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's ranking in World Bank's ease of doing business fell one spot to 23rd among 190 economies from 22nd last year, which was partly due to issues related to goods and services tax (GST).
However, speaking at a press conference here today, country manager of World Bank Group Global Knowledge and Research Hub in Malaysia Faris H. Hadad-Zervos said given that Malaysia started to implement GST last year, more time is needed for the system to run smooth.
Malaysia's distance to frontier score was down from 78.18 to 78.11, according to the "Doing Business 2017: Equal Opportunity for All" report.
Faris highlighted that Malaysia continues to maintain its strong performance in several doing business areas, including the top 15 performers globally in dealing with construction permits.
Besides that, Malaysia retains its spot as the third best economy in terms of protecting minority investors.
He also applauded Malaysia's effort to implement two reforms in the past year, namely the strengthening of credit reporting by providing consumer credit scores and the introduction of an online system for filing and paying GST.
Malaysia is the second highest among the Asean economies' rankings, just after Singapore which came in at the second place.
The other top-ranked economies globally are New Zealand (1), Denmark (3), Hong Kong (4) and South Korea (5).