Time to comply with border procedures (export), Doing Business
World Bank Doing Business 2020 proxy for “rate of customs declarations”: export border compliance time (hours) for a standardized shipment, by country.
Loading visualization...
Key Insights
- •High-income economies in the example set show very low export border compliance time (often ~1–2 hours).
- •Several large emerging markets show substantially longer border compliance times (e.g., India 52, Vietnam 56, Thailand 44 hours).
- •Some countries in the example set have very high measured border compliance time (e.g., Nigeria 135, South Africa 68 hours), indicating heavier procedural burden or delays.
- •This proxy enables consistent country-to-country mapping where a true customs-declarations rate is not standardized.
Country Rankings
Top 10 Countries
Bottom 10 Countries
Data Analysis
Value Distribution
How countries are distributed across the value range
Regional Comparison
Average values by world region (Global avg: 30.4hours)
About This Statistic
A globally standardized “rate of customs declarations” is not available because countries define and count customs declarations differently (e.g., import vs export, shipment vs line-item, paper vs electronic, inclusion of transit, etc.). For cross-country mapping, the closest comparable proxy is border-compliance performance from the World Bank’s Doing Business (Trading Across Borders) methodology.
This indicator measures the time (in hours) associated with complying with customs and other border procedures for exporting a standardized shipment. It captures documentary and inspection-related steps at the border as defined by the Doing Business methodology, making it suitable for country-level comparison and map visualization (lower hours generally indicate faster border clearance processes).
Methodology
Proxy selection: Because a standardized “customs declarations rate” is not published consistently across countries, we use Doing Business 2020 ‘Trading Across Borders’ export border compliance time (hours) as the closest globally comparable, numeric, country-level measure of customs/border processing burden. Values correspond to the time required for customs clearance and inspections for exporting a standardized shipment under Doing Business assumptions (export-side border compliance).
Full Data
| Rank ↑ | Country ↕ | Value ↕ |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nigeria | 135.0hours |
| 2 | Libya | 96.0hours |
| 3 | Ghana | 89.0hours |
| 4 | South Africa | 68.0hours |
| 5 | Russian Federation | 66.0hours |
| 6 | Chile | 60.0hours |
| 7 | Colombia | 60.0hours |
| 8 | Vietnam | 56.0hours |
| 9 | India | 52.0hours |
| 10 | Morocco | 51.0hours |
| 11 | Tunisia | 50.0hours |
| 12 | Peru | 48.0hours |
| 13 | Egypt | 48.0hours |
| 14 | Argentina | 48.0hours |
| 15 | Brazil | 48.0hours |
| 16 | Thailand | 44.0hours |
| 17 | Country 7640 | 44.0hours |
| 18 | Philippines | 42.0hours |
| 19 | Indonesia | 36.0hours |
| 20 | Lebanon | 36.0hours |
| 21 | Malaysia | 36.0hours |
| 22 | Greece | 24.0hours |
| 23 | Saudi Arabia | 24.0hours |
| 24 | People's Republic of China | 21.0hours |
| 25 | Kenya | 20.0hours |
| 26 | Mexico | 20.0hours |
| 27 | Israel | 12.0hours |
| 28 | United Arab Emirates | 12.0hours |
| 29 | Armenia | 12.0hours |
| 30 | Türkiye | 10.0hours |
| 31 | Australia | 7.0hours |
| 32 | New Zealand | 4.0hours |
| 33 | Canada | 2.0hours |
| 34 | France | 2.0hours |
| 35 | Italy | 2.0hours |
| 36 | Singapore | 2.0hours |
| 37 | Spain | 2.0hours |
| 38 | Ukraine | 2.0hours |
| 39 | United States of America | 2.0hours |
| 40 | Germany | 1.0hours |
| 41 | Japan | 1.0hours |
| 42 | South Korea | 1.0hours |
| 43 | Netherlands | 1.0hours |
| 44 | Poland | 1.0hours |
| 45 | United Kingdom | 1.0hours |
| 46 | Belgium | 1.0hours |
Topics
Data Source
This data comes from World Bank (Doing Business 2020, Trading Across Borders) (2020).
View Original Source