CII confident of significant jump in India’s rank in Ease of Doing Business

The Dollar Business Bureau

Technology is expected to play a major role in India's trade facilitation efforts

  The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has suggested an action plan to the government to help improve India’s ranking on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index in the coming years. CII says that while the recently released World Bank report on Ease of Doing Business 2015 ranks India at a low of 142 out of the total 189 countries, the rankings were for the year ended May 31, 2014. “The wave of new policy reforms have cascaded post the date,” CII said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that India must stand within the Top 50 countries in the Ease of Doing Business in the next two years. To help achieve the goal, CII has submitted three reports to the government which highlight the existing best practices in the States, an action plan for the Central Government, and recommendations to improve investment attractiveness. Recommendations include, rationalisation of the taxation regime, streamlining investment approval and provision of utilities, creating appropriate labour development and skill development ecosystem, and technology enablement across all government departments.

Source - World Bank

  India stands at the 126th position in the World Bank’s “Trade Across Borders” sub-index. CII says this can improve with facilitation of greater cross-border transactions. Among recommendations are: effective utilisation of FTA benefits, focus on the two fastest growing import markets of Africa and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), further Look East policy, ease export-import regulations, and resolve port related issues. CII says that technology can play a key role in implementing the changes. Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, said, “Once all the processes are identified and simplified by removing redundancy and duplicacy, these can be put on an IT based system which will connect various Government departments (Centre and State) and approvals and checks can be accomplished without jeopardising quality, time and cost aspects. This single factor can contribute a lot in improving India’s position in the rankings.” CII says that several recommendations have been accepted and the government will implement most of the other suggestions.

This article was published on December 3, 2014.