The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has achieved a qualitative leap in Starting up Business Indicator, relevant to the World Bank Group's Ease of Doing Business Index 2020. Thus Saudi Arabia has jumped 103 spots globally, from 141st in 2019 to 38th in 2020.
This is the result of a series of reforms and improvements that the business environment has witnessed recently for starting up and doing business, and this is the result of the unified efforts of the government agencies associated with starting up a business.
The Ministry of Commerce and Investment is handling and leading the activities related to Starting up Business and its relevant indicators, in cooperation and coordination with the following government agencies: Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Labour and Social Development, General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises, General Authority for Zakat and Income, SAMA, Social Insurance, Saudi Post, Civil Defence, in addition to the Council of Saudi Chambers. Over the past period, more than 34 reforms and improvements, in the business environment, have been implemented.
The reforms included all the activities related to starting up a business. Currently, starting-up a business can be done fully online and through a unified e-portal "Meras", including 30 government entities providing 200 e-services for men and women entrepreneurs. Now a businessman can obtain a trade name immediately, also auditing of contracts is cancelled, besides developing the mechanism of contract authentication. Shop licenses could be obtained immediately. No need now for subscription in the postal services (Wasel), it is available for free for the first year, as well as providing e-payment system for shop license fees through "Meras" e-platform.
MCI efforts to facilitate and ease the start-up of business have reduced the duration of setting up companies to 30 minutes online, instead of 15 days. Notably more than 266 thousand e-commercial registers have been issued for companies and institutions, also establishing more than 13 thousand companies as from January 2018, and more than 90 thousand instant municipal e-licenses granted upon issuance of the Commercial Registration, more over 4,995 enterprises have benefited from the instant visas through (Meras). This is for the institutions where the owners are working in. E-services enabled booking of more than 484,000 trade names online, and 5,337 instant authentication and auditing for Corporate Memorandum of Associations, instead of spending 5 days, as well as issuing 8,451 partners' decision online.
Reforms have also stimulated SMEs and entrepreneurs through quality initiatives, where more than 19,000 start up companies have recovered SR 600 million of government fees, also 1.2 billion riyals have been paid to enterprises and entrepreneurs from the (Indirect Loan Initiative), besides issuing bonds against SR 220 million for 200 start-up projects.