Massive jump in ease of doing biz

India ranks 100, better than 130 last yr

Washington/New Delhi, Oct. 31: India on Tuesday jumped 30 places to rank 100th in the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ ranking, sending the jubilant government to vow to continue reforms that will help the country break into top 50 in coming years.

India, which was ranked 142nd when the Narendra Modi government took office in 2014 and 130th last year, is the only large country this year to have achieved such a significant shift on the back of reforms in taxation, construction permits, investor protection and bankruptcy resolution.

The World Bank said it is “one of the top 10 improvers in this year’s assessment, having implemented reforms in 8 out of 10 ‘doing business’ indicators.” This is the first time India has broken into top 100 nations.

Reacting to the development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government is determined to further improve the rankings and scale greater economic growth.

The ranking comes as a shot in the arm for the government that has been battling dissenting voices over GST implementation.

Washington/New

Delhi, Oct. 31: India on Tuesday jumped 30 places to rank 100th in the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ ranking, sending the government to vow to continue reforms that will help the country break into top 50 in coming years.

He hailed as “historic” the jump in India’s ranking in ‘ease of doing business’ and said it was a result of “all-round & multi-sectoral reform push”.

Addressing the media in New Delhi, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said, “This is the highest jump that we have made in doing business ranking and it is significant for India because for the last 3-4 years we are trying to improve upon all the 10 parameters (of ranking) so that it becomes easy to do business in India.”

India’s ranking reflects nearly half of the 37 reforms, adopted since 2003, implemented in the last four years.

With June as cut-off, the ranking does not take into account the reform of GST, which from July 1 weaved the country of 1.3 billion into one market with one tax and removed inter-state barriers for trade. Also, demonetisation has not been covered.

“In 3 years, from 142 we have come to 100. And I think in those areas where we are still lagging behind, there is a sufficient amount of work in progress. There is a reason to believe that we have a capacity to further significantly improve our position,” he said.

India is now ranked 4th in the world on protecting investors (up from 13th last year), its ranking on ease of getting electricity has deteriorated from 26 last year to 29 this year.

It also lags in areas such as starting a business, enforcing contracts and dealing with construction permits.