There are no conditions for small and medium-sized enterprises in Azerbaijan

The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation prepared a rating of "Doing-Business - 2014: Understanding the regulation of the activities of small and medium-sized enterprises", in which Azerbaijan  ranks 70th among the 189 countries that participated (three positions behind it's rating last year which included 185 participants.) The list includes four new countries: Libya, Myanmar, San Marino, and South Sudan.

According to an online resource (http://russian.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/azerbaijan) Azerbaijan appeared as the country to have most improved with respect to the registration of companies - rising to 10th from 16th. The country has improved in the area of "insolvency resolution", i.e. proportion of overdue loans and renewals - rising to 86th from 95th. In addition, the country ranking improved with regard to taxation, and was ranked 77th from its former ranking of 79th, and on international trade was rated 168th from 169th in the previous year.

According to the report of Doing Business, in the past, the government made reforms associated with the start of a business, such as obtaining construction permits and the development of cross-border trade. However, after permission to build, small and medium business is facing great challenges because of red tape and 28 mandatory procedures, lasting for approximately nine months. Azerbaijan ranks 180th, whereas in the previous year it was 179th.

On January 1, 2012 (the latest reference of SSC), 224,830 business entities were registered, of which 210,643 are private companies with average annual accounting of approximately 94,000 employees. Every three out of four companies is hiding a number of employees resulting in underpayment of mandatory deductions to the Social Insurance Fund.

The most popular sector is peddling - 69.6 % of private enterprises are involved in it, 10.1% of the companies prefer transport services, 3.5% - accommodations, etc.

Total rating of "Doing-Business- 2014" is based on 10 items.  The worse ranking is in local lending (previously ranked 52nd and now ranked 55th), connecting power supply (previously ranked 179th and now 181st), and registering property (previously ranked 11th and now ranked 13th). Besides construction, protection of investors is also poor (previously ranked 21st and now ranked 22nd) and enforcing contracts (previously ranked 27th and now ranked 28th).

The highest ranked among the post-Soviet countries is Georgia (8th). Azerbaijan is ranked ahead of Lithuania (17th), Estonia (22nd), Latvia (24th), Armenia (37th), Kazakhstan (50th), Belarus (63rd), and Kyrgyzstan (68th.)

The ten countries deemed most favorable and accessible to entrepreneurs, except for the mentioned Georgia, are Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the USA, Denmark, Malaysia, South Korea, Norway and the United Kingdom. --17D-