The most and least affordable countries for starting a business, mapped
You have to spend money to make money — so goes the conventional wisdom.
But this is not just good advice for the entrepreneur looking to expand their business. It’s a legal and practical necessity to establish your business in the first place. That’s because, contrary to popular belief, the most challenging part about running a business may not be finding customers; it’s getting one started.
Depending on your country’s public policies and application processes, you might need more or less cash to be able to get a business up and running.
New business owners must shell out for approvals, licenses, permits, and inscriptions. In addition, governments often require a business to have a paid-in minimum capital requirement — a set amount of cash in the bank.
These processes are not just expensive but time-consuming and complicated.
BusinessFinancing.co.uk used information from The World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report to gather the cost and paid-in minimum capital requirement for a small- to medium-size limited liability company to start up and formally operate in the largest business cities across 190 countries.
