UK ranked eighth best place to start a business

The United Kingdom has been ranked eighth out of 137 countries worldwide and fifth out of 41 European countries for starting a business in a report from Global Entrepreneurship Week.

The Global Entrepreneurship Index 2017, which was produced by the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute, gave the UK an over-all score of 71 per cent, making it one of the top ten places in the world for starting up a business.

Boost

The US was found to be the best location in the world for starting a business at 83.4 per cent. This was trailed by Switzerland at 78 per cent and Canada at 75.6 per cent.

The index also found that improving the conditions for entrepreneurship in the UK by 10 per cent could help to boost the country’s economy by $460 billion.

The United Kingdom was deemed the strongest for cultural support and technology absorption, whilst Chile scored highly for its skills in start-up, Switzerland was ranked highly for internationalisation, risk capital was best in Israel, and America boasted the strongest opportunity perception.

The index also looked at the weakest areas for different countries, in the UK, networking was the weakest.

Army

Global Entrepreneur Network President Jonathan Ortmans said: “Thanks in part to programmes like Global Entrepreneurship Week and Startup Weekend, the last 10 years have delivered a huge global army of enthusiastic nascent entrepreneurs organised in vibrant communities – but policymakers have been slower in responding. Early adaptors such as Airbnb and Uber disrupted long-standing traditional industries while local, state and federal policymakers around the world were caught off guard in understanding the public policy implications of such dramatic innovation.”