This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 18th, 2007. I'm Caleb Brown. How has the business climate in Africa changed?

Alan Dennis, an economist at the World Bank helps keep track of business climates in the World Bank's

Doing Business Index. He indicates that business climates in some African countries

have improved radically, and others are now paying close attention to how their business

climates compare to their neighbors and the rest of the world.

From the recently released 2008 doing business report, we once again find that Africa is the region which has

the most unfriendly business environment.

In the areas that we measure, we are considering the ease, we are considering

the ease with which to start a business, we are considering how easy it is to register a property. We look at issues to do with how fast and also the

cost of obtaining an enforcement of your contract and how long it takes to be able to pay your taxes and the cost involved with that.

We also am looking at trading across borders and also how easy it is to close your business.

So these are a wide spectrum of business indicators that we look at and in most of these areas

we realize that several African countries have a lot of regulatory burden,

which makes it very difficult

to be able to undertake these transactions

in a timely and in a cost-effective manner.

The Peruvian economist Hernando DeSoto has made a big deal out of these documents that,

you know, you have these documents that prove who you are, we have documents that prove what property we own.

There seem to be significant barriers to make it attractive for Africans to engage in all manner of activities that we take for

granted in this country and in most of the developed world? Yes, we do realize that

there are difficulties in several African countries and obviously this has if you

have any difficult to register your property that has implications on your

...