Last week the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, signed a decree on measures simplifying the business establishment in the Country in accordance with the 'single window' principle. According to the Presidential decree, from 1 January 2008 the procedure of opening a new business will be simplified very much in Azerbaijan due to the single business registration system.
The Taxes Ministry of Azerbaijan will be the single State organization registering the entrepreneurship activities. According to the Taxes Minister, Fazil Mammadov, the organization takes high responsibility. Within the 'single window' system, from 1 January 2008 the period of business registration will be decreased up to 5-6 days and number of procedures up to 5.
The World Bank's 2008 Doing Business report says that 30 days are spent by passing 13 procedures in Azerbaijan to establish a new business. The Azerbaijani Minister considers that the registration procedures will be decreased even up to 2-3 days, but additional 2-3 days are required to have the documents confirmed at the notary office. The Minister considers that the entrepreneurs should submit three or four documents to the registration organization because the procedure of submitting documents is envisaged to be carried out though electronic system. As a result, the entrepreneurs will go to the Taxes Ministry only once to receive legal documents and only one document (identity card) should be submitted for this.
According to the Minister, the tax bodies are technically prepared to begin the business registration. However, it need to make amendments to several legislative acts (within two months), including Civil and Tax Codes.
In addition, applying the 'single window' system in Azerbaijan will raise the assessments regarding Country. According to assessments by the WB and IFC, the ranking of Azerbaijan improved compared to 2006 and this year the country rose to 96th place in the Doing Business 2008 report.
Doing Business 2008 ranks 178 economies on the ease of doing business based on 10 indicators of business regulation.