Doing Business 2010: Reforming through difficult times, which features the latest ranking of economic competitiveness (published on Thursday by the International Finance Corporation – The World Bank), contains some especially positive news for The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

As for Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom moved up two spots to number 13, surpassing Iceland and Japan, respectively, while inching closer to a coveted top-10 spot. The Kingdom is striving to become a top-10 competitive economy by 2010 (which coincides with next year’s Doing Business). TradeFlow21 managing partners Lewis Nescott and Steven Towns recently met with officials at the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia and had a very productive discussion — including the unequivocal significance of the Kingdom’s “10 x 10″ goal. See the next edition of Trade and Transactions, TradeFlow21′s monthly e-newsletter, for more details. (Contact us for a free subscription.)

Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates continued its impressive climbing of the rankings in recent years, moving up 14 spots to number 33. Among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, only Saudi Arabia and the UAE improved their competitiveness in the ranking. While other GCC members also instituted reforms, the global landscape is quite competitive and therefore, on a relative basis, they lost some ground.

Following is a list of select countries with their 2010 rankings and year-over-year change.

Top-10
1. Singapore
2. New Zealand
3. Hong Kong, China
4. United States
5. United Kingdom
6. Denmark
7. Ireland
8. Canada
9. Australia
10. Norway
* Among the top-10, all were unchanged except a switch in places between the U.K. and Denmark.

GCC
13. Saudi Arabia (+2)
20. Bahrain (-2)
33. United Arab Emirates (+14)
39. Qatar (-2)
61. Kuwait (-9)
65. Oman (-5)

“BRIC”
89. China (-3)
120. Russian Federation (-2)
129. Brazil (-2)
133. India (-1)

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