Between 2009 and 2010, Peru cut the cost of setting up a new business from $685 to $564, the number of separate bureaucratic procedures from nine to six, and the time the whole affair took from 41 to 27 days. It’s an impressive (indeed, world-leading) improvement, and one which presumably will help Peruvian entrepreneurs create jobs, fulfil the desires of Peruvian citizens, and make money into the bargain.
These statistics come from the World Bank’s Doing Business project, which since 2003 has been publishing data on the ease of doing business around the world, with indicators such as how long it takes to establish a business, how easy it is to buy and sell commercial property, or how time-consuming and expensive it is to clear customs. (I should declare an interest: in 2004 and 2005, I helped with some of the superficial details of the Doing Business project.)
Yet the Peruvian good news story feels oddly precise. The Doing Business methodology is a kind of time-and-motion study of the process of establishing a hypothetical business with some quite specific characteristics. Local experts, typically lawyers, examine the standardised case study and figure out all the papers that must be filed, departments that must be notified and official fees to be paid.