Croatia’s World Bank Doing Business Rank Slips

Croatia has fallen from 84th to 89th place in the latest rankings of nations the World Bank deems friendliest to do business in.

The 2014 “Doing Business” report’s top five was unchanged from one year ago, with Singapore the top nation, followed by Hong Kong, New Zealand, the U.S. and Denmark. China dropped five spots to 96th, while the U.K. dropped from 7th to 10th spot. It was the eighth year in a row that Singapore led the annual competitiveness scorecard.

The World Bank’s study, which first started in 2002, analysis 189 economies, assessing them on measures such as the costliness of commercial regulations and the strength of public institutions. Nations are ranked based on indicators such as the time required to start a business, file tax returns and export or import goods. Croatia this year improved its ranking points in 10 fields by 0.9 points, up from 63.7 to 64.6 out of 100. It was still not enough however to see its ranking drop.

Nations ahead of Croatia in the region include Slovenia (33rd), Montenegro (44th), Bulgaria (58th), Romania (73rd) and Kosovo (86th).