Foreword
Starting a business in another country is no easy matter. Remember that every business is an investment started by someone, that will require constant reinvestment, you can never get lazy as you are your businesses’ alpha and omega. Invest time, effort, and tons of research into your business idea.
Each country has different accounting agencies, regulations, and certain challenges behind operations. There is a website you can visit to better understand the challenges behind setting up a business in certain countries. I am talking about doingbusiness.org, the website does case studies culminating date from completed questionaires. By the end of this article I will explain what the website does great but why it is only part of the research you should be conducting.
What Further Research is Needed From the Entrepreneur
The website I am reviewing does not offer much in terms of business strategies, so you will need to do most of this research in school, online, or by experience. Everything from inventory, marketing, distribution, etc; needs to be learned outside. This is okay because this is why this site is so much fun, as it truely excels in research into grading countries in ease of starting a business, it would be to bogged down if it tried going into business strategy.
What Important Information is provided.
Although most of the methodologies will not be important to small businesses, this site does have some quintessential sections, many are fundamentally important for you to decide if you can start a business there and where you need to go to get it done. These include:
Starting a business
Getting Electricity
Paying Taxes
Trade Across Borders
Enforcing Contracts
Resolving Insolvency
Labor Market Regulations
Starting a Business
This factor is graded by entrepreneurs who complete a questionaire which create results of a case study around the procedures, time, and financial costs of starting a business in the country. The surveys are taken in a chosen city.
The questionaires are for hypothectical companies that engaging in production, retail or service activities. The studies assume that the business does not receive special benefits, trade internationaly or subjects itself to any extra product tax regiments. It is assumed the business leases the business space with an approximate office space of 10,000 feet. The questionaire asks about reforms around starting a business, the questionaires go as far as asking the entrepreneurs to fill out info on the time in calender days, costs in fees, and the agency to which the procedure was completed with. Last, the questionaires ask about the agencies which hold the information.
Dealing with Construction Permits
This section looks into the availability of regulations behind building permits, the required documents, fees, all required approvals of plans and relevant agencies (any water department, or electrical authority, etc). Further questions examine the availability of national building code, classification of buildings, fire, environmental, sanitary, and structural specifications. Lastly this questionaire closes inquiring around third party use and certification requirements, quality control before, during and after construction, insurance requirements, certifications.
Getting Electricity
Is the utility privately or publiclly owned
how frequent are power outages and how long do they last
odes the utility analyze power outages, and how does it manage restoration of power after an outage.
Is data availabe to the public? Are customers notified of planned outages?
What are the costs of the electricity? Transparancy of tariffs?
How to obtain a connection for electricity?
Who conducts the wiring what requirements are imposed on them? Does a mandatory inspection of wiring exists and if so what frequency?
There is a ton of information on this site, definitely check it out if you are interested in starting a business in another country. I recommend downloading the questionaires behind each methodology as they cover most of the basics.
I was not paid for posting this, All property of doingbusiness.org belongs to their respective owner. I wrote this post to answer an inquiry.
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