Smart Regulation: Key to Competitiveness

"Smart Regulation" is a basic concept to many regulatory programs. Canada, for example, set up an External Advisory Committee on Smart Regulation (EASCR) in May 2003 to modernize the regulatory system and support an innovative and dynamic economy. United Kingdom established Better Regulation Executive (BRE) in May 2005 to challenge new legislation and simplify, improve and even scrap existing regulation. Singapore formed Smart Regulation Committee (SRC) in December 2005 to improve the knowledge, awareness and practice of regulation across the public service, too.

Smart regulation is not about regulating less. It is about governments working better to serve the interests of people: better protection, lower costs, faster and more predictable regulatory processes, less overlap and duplication, more rapid alignment with global best practices and greater transparency and accountability. It means "competitiveness" and "efficiency".

It is therefore not surprising that economies rank best in the Doing Business are among the most competitive around the globe. In fact, 19 out of the 25 best performing economies from Doing Business 2008 and 17 from Doing Business 2009 are ranked among the 25 most competitive economies in the Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009.

Rank	Doing Business 08	Doing Business 09	Global Competitiveness 08-09
1	Singapore	Singapore	United States
2	New Zealand	New Zealand	Switzerland
3	United States	United States	Denmark
4	Hong Kong, China	Hong Kong, China	Sweden
5	Denmark	Denmark	Singapore
6	United Kingdom	United Kingdom	Finland
7	Canada	Ireland	Germany
8	Ireland	Canada	Netherlands
9	Australia	Australia	Japan
10	Iceland	Norway	Canada
11	Norway	Iceland	Hong Kong, China
12	Japan	Japan	United Kingdom
13	Finland	Thailand	Korea
14	Sweden	Finland	Austria
15	Thailand	Georgia	Norway
16	Switzerland	Saudi Arabia	France
17	Estonia	Sweden	Taiwan, China
18	Georgia	Bahrain	Australia
19	Belgium	Belgium	Belgium
20	Germany	Malaysia	Iceland
21	Netherlands	Switzerland	Malaysia
22	Latvia	Estonia	Ireland
23	Saudi Arabia	Korea	Israel
24	Malaysia	Mauritius	New Zealand
25	Austria	Germany	Luxembourg

Doing Business provides a quantitative measure of regulations for starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business - as they apply to domestic small and medium-size enterprises.

The Global Competitiveness Report measures competitiveness in institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market sophistication, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation.