However, DRC remains a challenging environment in which to conduct business. The country ranked in the World Bank’s 2020 Doing Business report 183 out of 190 countries. It takes four procedures and seven days, and costs 16.3% of GNI per capita to start a business.
Irrespective of the economic sector, market competition remains severely constrained largely due to high levels of economic opportunism, such as corruption at all levels of public administration, and the direct intervention in the economy by the ruling elite for personal gain.
Market-based competition is confined to only a few segments of the economy. Heavily dependent on exports from the extractive sector and, given the quality of its governance, the state remains dependent on customs duties, which makes investments extremely costly. This is very detrimental to progress of market norms, as any foreign investor faces a high risk that they will be pushed out of the market by actors close to the government.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (INS), more than 80% of the workforce operate in the informal sector. The large informal sector is less the result of an extensively regulated market, and more the result of a highly dysfunctional, unfair and opaque institutional framework, high levels of corruption and clientelism, and a lack of infrastructure.