Bulgaria is ranked 51st among 183 countries in the Doing Business 2011 report, compiled by the International Finance Corp (IFC), the World Bank's private-sector lender.

According to the overall ranking, Bulgaria is lagging one position behind Qatar and is one place ahead of Botswana.

Bulgaria was also placed 51st in the Doing Business 2010 ranking, which indicates the business environment in the country has not changed drastically in comparison to last year. However, Bulgaria has moved up and down in comparison to other countries in 8 of the total of 9 sub-indexes.

Bulgaria has improved mostly in two topics – Paying Taxes (up by 10 places to 85th) and Starting a Business (up by 7 places to 43rd).

The Paying Taxes index shows that Bulgaria has improved in comparison to last year due to the employers' decreased burden in social insurance payments. As for the Starting Business topic, Bulgaria's improvement is due to the minimum capital requirement for starting a business being dropped from BGN 5 T to just BGN 2.

Among all 9 topic rankings, Bulgaria's performance is best in Getting Credit - 6th place, with no change in comparison to 2009. Similarly to last year, Bulgaria's worst ranking is in the Dealing with Construction Permits topic, in which the country has slipped 2 places further to 119th.

The index shows that it has also become harder to register a property in Bulgaria, as the country's ranking has dropped 6 places to 62nd.The protection of investors has worsened in 2010, according to the ranking, in which Bulgaria is 3 places down in comparison to 2009 and is currently 44th.

The Trading Across Borders and Enforcing Contracts conditions in Bulgaria , however, have improved slightly – with one position each – to 108th and 87th respectively.

For a fifth year in a row, the overall ranking is topped by Singapore, followed by Hong Kong and New Zealand, while the bottom three places are occupied by Burundi, Central African Republic and Chad.

The United Kingdom and USA are ranked 4th and 5th overall respectively. China is 80th, the Russian Federation is 123rd.Romania is ranked 56th. while Greece is 109th.