entire territory of Serbia, as well as other register relevant business-related registers (such as the Collateral Registry, the Financial Accounts Registry etc.).<sup>4</sup> Considering that the paper records inherited from the courts were so out of date that they were unusable, a re-registration campaign was implemented, requiring all active companies to reregister in the SBRA free of charge. In the course of one year the registry was centralized, up to date and accessible via the Internet, leading to far greater legal certainty. As one attorney says, “ _Now I can check in a few minutes if a company exists, what is the address, and who is authorized to represent them. Before, I had to go to the court for each inquiry_ ” (Jersild and Skopljak 2007).

For the first time in public administration, the silence is consent rule was applied, mandating that if the SBRA fails to formally respond a request for registration, either by granting it or by requesting more information, in the term of a maximum of 5 days, it shall be deemed that the company has been registered. The Company Law of 2004 reduced the minimum capital requirement for limited liability companies (90% of all companies in Serbia) from approximately €5,000 to €500 and eased requirements for establishing companies by making the rules more flexible. The minimum capital requirement was further reduced by the Company Law of 2011 to less than €1.

The effects of the reform were felt almost immediately. The time necessary for starting a business was reduced from 51 days in 2004 to 15 in 2005 (World Bank, 2006). The new system was a radical change, with a focus on customer service and user friendliness. The system moved from decentralized, inconsistent and discretionary practices of the commercial courts, to a centralized, up-to-date and transparent regime with internet access to all registration data. The SBRA exchanges information with all relevant stakeholder agencies and has grown into a onestop shop that currently manages more than 20 business related registries. For business entry, the SBRA became a fully operational one-stop shop in 2009 (including tax registration, social security and health insurance).

> 4 The reform had broad support from the international and multilateral organizations operating in the country as well as high level political support from the Minister of Economy and Prime Minister. The biggest opponents of the reform were the commercial courts and the Ministry of Justice, which tried to stall the process and persuade policy makers to keep business registration in the courts. Business registration was a large source of power and influence for commercial courts, and so they opposed removing it from their activities. The Serbian Chamber of Commerce and the National Bank of Serbia also wanted it under their control. Thanks to the persistence of an Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Deregulation (and later the Council for Regulatory Reform), the reform was implemented as envisaged at the beginning. Almost all facets of the law were included in the final language. But the Ministry of Finance and Tax Administration retained control of issuing tax identification numbers until 2009 when all the processes for starting a business, including issuance of the tax IDs were unified under the SBRA.

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