#8 France

Procedures necessary to start a business - 5

Days required to start business - 7

France’s annual GDP is $2.6 trillion. In January 2009, the French government started auto-entrepreneurship, a plan aimed at increasing entrepreneurship by decreasing the taxes, paperwork and social charges for people looking to start small businesses. There was a 55.5% increase in the number of businesses started in France in the second quarter of 2009, demonstrating that people will create businesses if the government eases costs and work associated with starting a company. France has a total bank loan success rate of 83.3% and more than 94% of businesses are microenterprises — businesses with fewer than 10 employees.

France is a member of the G8 group of leading industrialized countries, it is ranked as the world's fifth largest and Europe's second largest economy by nominal GDP; with 39 of the 500 biggest companies of the world in 2010, France ranks world's 4th and Europe's 1st in the Fortune Global 500 ahead of Germany and the UK.

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