The World Bank issued its flagship report, Doing Business 2020, on 24 October 2019 according to which Mauritius still holds on to its pole position on the African continent, ranking 1st for the region. In addition, it has also made a considerable progression on its worldwide ranking by moving up 7 places compared to last year and now ranks 13th. This achievement is the result of the government’s unflinching commitment to create a business friendly environment for investors that have translated into the introduction of efficient regulatory reforms over the past year.

The Doing Business 2020 report (the “Report") assesses the regulations that promote business activities as well as the bottlenecks and red tape that hinder investment across 190 countries. The methodology of the report is focused on the core areas of the life of a business as shown below:

Source: Doing Business 2020 report

According to the Report, Mauritius witnessed a marked improvement in the following areas:

• Dealing with Construction Permits: Mauritius streamlined the process of dealing with construction permits by simplifying the process of plan approvals from utilities and reducing the time to apply for wastewater connection
• Registering Property: Mauritius made property registration faster by making it easier to check for encumbrances. Mauritius also improved the quality of its land administration system by publishing official service standards and court statistics on land disputes for the previous calendar year
• Enforcing Contracts: Mauritius made enforcing contracts easier by publishing performance measurement reports for the commercial division of the Supreme Court
• Resolving Insolvency: Mauritius made resolving insolvency easier by improving the continuation of the debtor’s business during insolvency proceedings