Red tape: how long it takes to open a business

Speed is the most honest test of bureaucracy. Here is the number of days it takes to register a new company, from the fastest country to the slowest.

World Bank Doing Business, last edition (2019 data, published 2020). Procedures have been simplified in many countries since, so read this as a ranking of habits rather than today’s exact days.

Fastest: New Zealand (0.5 days), Canada (1.5 days) and Hong Kong (1.5 days). Slowest: Brazil (80 days), South Africa (45 days) and Poland (37 days).

The newer view: B-READY regulatory framework

The World Bank's successor survey, B-READY, scores the quality of business regulation from 0 to 100. Its first rounds cover 31 of the Nestlyzer countries.

Sources: World Bank Doing Business (IC.REG.DURS, IC.REG.PROC) and B-READY 2025. Nestlyzer scores each measure 0–100 between the 5th and 95th percentile of the countries it covers. How the method works.