WELLINGTON, May 30 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand remains a top performing economy among members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to a World Bank report.

    New Zealand Finance Minister Michael Cullen hailed Tuesday further proof from the World Bank.

    In December the bank rated New Zealand as the easiest country out of 155 to do business in.

    The World Bank has now released a detailed breakdown of the 2005 survey results comparing New Zealand's performance against the OECD average.

    Among the findings, regarding starting a business, being ranked4th, New Zealand entrepreneurs can expect to go through two steps to launch a business over 12 days compared to the OECD average of 6.5 steps over 19.5 days.

    As to enforcing contracts, with New Zealand being ranked 4th, it takes 50 days on average here to enforce a contract through legal action compared to nearly 226 days in the OECD on average.

    And with regard to hiring and firing workers, for New Zealand the index measuring the ease of hiring and firing workers is seven compared to an OECD average of 35.8 (a higher value represents more rigid employment regulations).

    In other areas, New Zealand ranked 15th for the time it takes to export a standard shipment of goods and 16th for the amount of effort required to pay taxes.

    The bottom ranks of the survey were filled out by states including Iraq, Angola, the Congo and Afghanistan. Enditem