Mauritius Regulatory Efficiency

With no minimum capital requirements, the overall start-up process has been simplified. Launching a business takes five procedures and six days on average. Licensing requirements remain time-consuming, taking over 100 days to complete. Labor regulations are not rigid, and the costs of terminating employment are relatively low. Inflationary pressures have increased, but overall monetary stability has been well maintained.

Business Freedom 78.2 

Labor Freedom 72.3 

Monetary Freedom 75.4 

Business Freedom

Business freedom is an overall indicator of the efficiency of government regulation of business. The quantitative score is derived from an array of measurements of the difficulty of starting, operating, and closing a business. The business freedom score for each country is a number between 0 and 100, with 100 equaling the freest business environment. The score is based on 10 factors, all weighted equally, using data from the World Bank’s Doing Business study:

• Starting a business—procedures (number);
• Starting a business—time (days);
• Starting a business—cost (% of income per capita);
• Starting a business—minimum capital (% of income per capita);
• Obtaining a license—procedures (number);1
• Obtaining a license—time (days);
• Obtaining a license—cost (% of income per capita);
• Closing a business—time (years);
• Closing a business—cost (% of estate); and
• Closing a business—recovery rate (cents on the dollar).2

Each of these raw factors is converted to a scale of 0 to 100, after which the average of the converted values is computed. The result represents the country’s business freedom score. For example, even if a country requires the highest number of procedures for starting a business, which yields a score of zero in that factor, it could still receive a score as high as 90 based on scores in the other nine factors. Canada, for instance, receives scores of 100 in nine of these 10 factors, but the 14 licensing procedures required by the government equate to a score of 64.5 for that factor.
Each factor is converted to a scale of 0 to 100 using the following equation:

Factor Score_i = 50 factor_average/factor_i

which is based on the ratio of the country data for each factor relative to the world average, multiplied by 50. For example, on average worldwide, it takes 18 procedures to get necessary licenses. Canada’s 14 licensing procedures are a factor value better than the average, resulting in a ratio of 1.29. That ratio multiplied by 50 equals the final factor score of 64.5.
For the six countries that are not covered by the World Bank’s Doing Business report, business freedom is scored by analyzing business regulations based on qualitative information from reliable and internationally recognized sources.