Since becoming a Republic, we have joked a great deal about ours being a banana one. Sometimes it's said jokingly, sometimes it's said seriously, and sometimes it's an expression of our frustration with some law or policy.

Now the joke has crossed the border. It has slightly changed form, but an article appearing on Yahoo had two words to say to us: banana stand.

A little context is in order.

Yahoo recently published an article on Europe, summarizing the continent with a brief descriptive paragraph on each European Union country. Americans still equate Europe with the EU, and so countries like Norway and Switzerland were left out.

The article was a somewhat light-hearted, somewhat stereotypical, and, as with all things somewhat stereotypically light-hearted, a somewhat true account of what each country in Europe does best in doing worst.

Our neighbours to the north, for instance, are notorious for tax evasion, whereas the island of our former colonial rulers is the place to be for a cocaine party.

The fault securing us a place on the list lies in an area we frequently boast about: the questionable honour of our country is that it's the hardest place to open a business.

Contrary to what I've been brought up to learn through propagandistic hammering over the last decade, when it comes to establishing a business the World Bank ranked Malta in the 161^st place! That's below China and the West Bank.

The West Bank! With all the fighting and disorganization going on there, it is still easier to open a business there than in Malta! Incredible! Beyond words, really!

We're talking about a disputed territory here, one with an unclear legal status, and whose political status is just as murky, with its future the subject of constant and consistently unsuccessful negotiations.

Thankfully, a ray of hope might be beaming through the foggy horizon. As this newspaper had reported, Malta had moved up to 136 in the latest update, thus surpassing the land marred by war, but still eight places below the country we so characteristically make fun of and smugly criticize for being "communist" and "backward".

The West Bank now occupies the 162^nd place, ironically. Don't let that fool you though: the gap is not as wide as it would first appear.

As of this year, it takes 44 days to open a business in the West Bank and Gaza: that's only nine days more than it takes to go through all the unnecessarily necessary bureaucratic hurdles to open one in Malta.

Compare that to another EU country, Hungary for instance, which currently ranks 57^th with only five days. Germany, with only 15 days, somehow ranks 114^th, but that is offset by the ease of doing business, where it ranked 14^th.

The irony does not stop there either: Malta is ranked at the 114^th place for getting electricity, while the West Bank sits comfortably above us at 83^rd. We are 83^rd in registering property: the West Bank is 99^th.

I must be going bananas.

How on earth could we, an EU member state - a party to the largest trading block in the world - fall so far behind in the list? How can a nation which is entirely dependent on services make it so hard for people to provide them? How can a people so mercantile in every aspect of their life make it a nightmare for someone to join their ranks?

While we may have upgraded from the banana stand, we are still street-hawkers at the lower end of the market opportunities list. "Beach peddlers" are not the two words I'd like to see replace the former ones.

To be fair, these lists tend to attract a lot of criticism with regard to the methodology they employ. Nevertheless, it's a known fact that starting any kind of business in Malta is a headache. In fact, unless you know the right people, acquiring any sort of permit is a troublesome and painful process.

The Business First website tries to present the process in a structured, holistic and comprehensive manner: but the site itself betrays the complexity involved in starting a business. There are a myriad of steps to be taken and permits to be granted before one can start to even think of selling something, let alone making some profit out of his business ideas. While the effort taken to welcome newcomers to the business community via a one-stop information portal is to be commended, the situation needs to be tackled from its roots, and the procedures in place need to be streamlined further to facilitate start-ups and business establishment. The procedures are so complicated sometimes that the information provided is in any case close to useless: a simple call to the department concerned reveals how complicated some procedures truly are, a reality which fails to mirror the neat and efficient presentation in cyberspace.

Starting and maintaining a business is hard work and involves great effort - making the initial phase as least complicated as possible is therefore a must, especially if we are to promote and encourage innovative ideas and creative enterprises, not to mention attracting foreign investment. I have met many hard-working people with great business ideas who were discouraged by the arduous task of simply launching their business.

Expecting an easy ride in business is naive; expecting to not have to face insurmountable hurdles before even starting to implement the business plan is expectedly reasonable and should be reasonably expected.

There are other things budding businessmen need to worry about than having to deal with a usually incompetent and mediocre - not to mention ancient - bureaucratic system, and there are other things that we, as a nation, need to worry about as well.

Belgium won the worst traffic congestion award, but I wager we can protest.

That's clearly a title that belongs to us.