Real estate rules making life harder for Hong Kong businesses
City ranked second-best place to run a firm, but report criticises new property cooling measures
Hong Kong is second only to Singapore as the world’s best place to run a business, but the city’s high ranking obscures its “glaring” problems with real estate regulations, the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation said on Tuesday.
“Stamp duty reforms have made a negative impact … doubling the cost of transferring commercial properties and making it harder for local entrepreneurs,” said Jiang Nan, co-author of the 2014 edition of the Doing Business report, published since 2003 by the World Bank and IFC.
The yearly rankings score 189 economies on 10 indicators, focusing on the conditions faced by small or medium-sized businesses.
In the overall rankings, New Zealand placed third, the United States fourth, and Denmark fifth. The top five retained their positions from a year ago. The mainland rose to 96th from an adjusted ranking of 99th.
Hong Kong was rated 60th in the world last year when it came to the ease of registering property and dropped to 89th this year. Singapore is now rated 28th for ease of registering property, up from 36th last year.
Jiang said it took 35½ days to complete the property registration process in Hong Kong, compared with 5½ days in Singapore.
Cooling measures introduced in Hong Kong in October last year to curb speculation imposed an additional stamp duty of 15 per cent on purchases by corporate and non-permanent-resident buyers. In February, the stamp duty rate for transfers of commercial properties worth between HK$6.72 million and HK$20 million was doubled from 3.75 per cent to 7.5 per cent.
