Benchmarks useless if you sit on them

WE NEED more entrepreneurs, no doubt about it. What's not certain is whether we have the political will to foster a culture of entrepreneurship and to create or re-create regulations that will open the doors wider to the many aspiring Bruneian entrepreneurs who have to think long and hard about how deep their pockets are to sustain themselves through the challenging months of starting a business.

All it takes is to send a signal that we have begun the process of reforming our procedures for starting a business. Apparently, however, we have not; rather, we have wasted our opportunity to benchmark Brunei with other countries through its inclusion in the World Bank's Doing Business 2008 and take concrete steps to make the Sultanate more attractive as a business destination.

We did well the first time Brunei was included in the rankings. Doing well, however, isn't an excuse to celebrate getting relatively better rankings than neighbours and getting stuck there for years.

Knowing how we fare in comparative rankings is a step towards understanding our strengths and weaknesses and finding ways to improve.

In the study's Starting a Business category, Brunei ranked 117th in 2008. That was not bad in a scorechart for 178 economies. In just one year, our ranking fell to 130th out of 181 economies.

Still, we can be soft on ourselves and say "It's not bad at all". But using these benchmarks is not about watching passively our rankings go up and down. The information we get from benchmarking studies is supposed to point out what we need to do to make the economy more competitive for businesses. Have there been significant changes affecting the ease or difficulty of setting up shop in Brunei?

None. That's if we use information from the World Bank's 2009 report. It says no reforms were made in the Starting a Business category as well as in all the others included in the study.

The 2009 study listed Brunei as among the 10 economies that regulate business start-ups the most with 18 procedures that entrepreneurs have to comply with (or is it "put up with"?) to get their business up and running. Moreover, the study listed Brunei, where it takes 116 days to set up shop, as among the 10 economies where starting a business is slowest.

Smoothing the entry point for start-ups is basic for any economy that truly wants to cultivate a culture of entrepreneurship.

You install numerous and complex hurdles to be cleared and you dissuade many from following in the footsteps of business titans who started small.

Attracting the big capitalists and technology giants of course will help Brunei expedite its dream of weaning itself from heavy reliance on the oil and gas sector.

But small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who are likely to be stifled by cumbersome business start-up regulations, are equally important in realising our goal of economic diversification.

We can keep mouthing this ambition every chance we get, but it won't come true just by declaring our desire for it.

Economic giants and rapidly developing economies nurture small business because from their ranks rise big business that contribute immensely to a country's economic output.

But, again, it's not as if these are factors vaguely known to our policymakers. They know how long it takes for an aspiring entrepreneur to get his shop up and running from the time he or she files the papers to register the enterprise.

They know that businessmen have to pay rent for a shop that doesn't earn a cent for months while waiting for inspectors to do their job.

They do not need the World Bank to confirm that in any study. But if they need scholars to do a research study on it, then fine. We do hope the intention is not for Brunei to grab a spot in the top 10 economies that wield a heavy hand on business start-ups every year.