The World Bank's report Doing Business in the Arab World 2009 said the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the easiest country to do business in the Middle East. The report ranked UAE in the 14th place globally in its assessment of 181 countries. The UAE jumped 14 places on the ranking from the 2008 assessment, when it was ranked at 24. “Economies that have efficient customs, good transport networks and fewer document requirements, making compliance with export and import procedures faster and cheaper, are more competitive globally,” the report said. Closely behind at the 16th place is Saudi Arabia. Bahrain was the third easiest country to trade with in the region at the 21st position and Egypt came next at 24. For the ranking three basic elements are taken into account: The number of documents required for export and import, time required for export and import and cost to export and import. UAE requires five documents for export and seven for import, just 10 days for import and export, while the cost per container is $587 for import and $618 for export. For a third time, Egypt is one of the top 10 economies that reformed their business regulations. Egypt, which was the world's top reformer of business regulations last year, continued to lead, with improvements in six of the 10 areas the report covers. Egypt advanced 11 places in the global rankings on the ease of doing business. The region's other leaders in reforming regulations are Saudi Arabia and Tunisia; each made it easier to do business in four areas. Iraq was positioned at 178 and as the most difficult in the Middle East. Djibouti and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia come in the top with five documents required for import or export, while trading with the UAE requires five documents for export and seven for import. The report said that in 2005, the UAE improved the infrastructure of Jebel Ali port, reducing the time for export and import significantly. Improvements included a port expansion with new berths and conversion of relevant documents such as customs declaration into electronic format. Recently, Dubai Trade, an online trading portal for DP World, Dubai Customs and Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority (Jafza) has worked to improve trade facilities. It offers numerous services to its clients to help reduce the amount of time, cost and documents required for trade operations.
