KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 1): Malaysia slipped one notch to rank 24th in the World Bank's latest Doing Business Report, down from the 23rd place last year.

Despite the slight decline, Malaysia actually recorded an improvement by 0.96 in terms of overall distance to frontier (DTF) score, from 77.47 in the previous year to 78.43 this year.

The DTF measure shows the distance of each economy to the frontier which represents the best performance observed on each of the indicators across all economies in the Doing Business sample since 2005.

World Bank's country manager in Malaysia Faris Hadad-Zervos said Malaysia has retained its spot among the world's top 25 economies on the Doing Business measures.

"As the government continues to strengthen the business regulatory framework, it is important to focus on the areas where small and medium firms face difficulties, such as starting a business," he told a news conference in conjunction with the launch of the report today.