World Bank’s biz index to cover 8 new Indian cities
The World Bank has agreed to widen the scope of the ease of doing business rankings for India by expanding it to eight more cities.
Disclosing this, Nirmala Sitharaman, minister of state (independent charge) for commerce and industry, said the move would improve the quality of the index as the survey will cover 10 cities. At present it is restricted to two cities—new Delhi and Mumbai.
India has been very keen to improve its position in the ease of doing business rankings conducted by the World Bank. At present, India is ranked 130 and is seeking to improve this to 90.
Chandrajit Banerjee, directorgeneral of the Confederation of Indian Industry, a business lobby, welcomed the move. “The index will now be more representative of the country.”
Speaking at the India Conference in Chubu 2017 in Nagoya, Japan, Sitharaman said that Japan and India had, over the last three years, deepened their relationship. “The Japanese Prime Minister will be visiting India in the second half of the year.”
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit in September 2014, both countries elevated ties to a strategic and global partnership.
Addressing the conference, Ramesh Abhishek, secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, said: “Conditions are being created to push the economy into a high-growth trajectory.” In his presentation, he claimed that India’s consumer market would expand to $3.6 trillion and the country would add another 150 million people to the middle class by 2025.