Andhra Pradesh tops ease of doing business ranking
NEW DELHI: Andhra Pradesh topped the ranking of states in the central government’s ease of doing business survey, while a newly introduced feedback system dragged down the rankings of several states, including West Bengal, as their claims were not matched by feedback from users.
Though the reform evidence score of Andhra Pradesh (99.73%) was lower than Telangana and Jharkhand, who scored a perfect 100%, Andhra’s user feedback score at 86.5% was the highest among all states, helping it top the Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP) ranking conducted by the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP).
The ranking, first introduced in 2015 with 285 action points, expanded to 372 measures in 2017 spread across 12 areas, including registering property, paying taxes and labour regulation enablers.
While in the first two years, the ranking was based only on evidence provided by state governments, DIPP introduced user feedback in 78 action points from architects, lawyers, contractors among others to weigh whether reform measures are reaching the users or not in 2017. From the next year, the ranking will be based entirely on user feedback, DIPP secretary Ramesh Abhishek said.
In 2017, nine states achieved a combined score of more than 95% while six states achieved a combined score between 90-95%.