India jumps to 100th place in 'ease of doing business'

The Dollar Business Bureau

India ranked 100th in 'ease of doing business', according to the World Bank's Doing Business Report 2018, jumping 30 places from its position last year. This is the first time that India has entered into top 100 countries.

The Doing Business Report is an assessment by World Bank of 190 nations on 10 indicators which covers the lifecycle of a business. India’s rank has been improved in 6 of the 10 indicators and it has moved nearer to the international best practices. 

“It is one of the top 10 improvers in this year's assessment, having implemented reforms in 8 out of 10 'doing business' indicators,” the World Bank said.

India, which was ranked 130th last year, is the only large economy to have achieved such a major shift this year due to taxation reforms, construction permits, bankruptcy resolution and investor protection.

The World Bank, in its report, said that the ranking of India reflects almost half of the 37 reforms that were adopted since 2003, implemented in the past four years.

The report does not take into consideration the landmark tax reform of Goods and Services Tax (GST), which was implemented from July 1 as the cut-off for assessment for business environment was June 1. In addition, the report has not covered the demonetisation.

While terming the improvement in the rankings as historic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said that the jump is the outcome of the all-round and multi-sectoral reform push of Team India. 

“Guided by the mantra of ‘reform, perform & transform’, we are determined to further improve our rankings and scale greater economic growth,” Modi said. 

Addressing the media on the development, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that this is the highest jump the country has made in the ‘ease of doing business’ ranking. It is significant because we are trying to improve our ranking on all the 10 parameters, for the past 3-4 years so that doing business in India becomes easy.

“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.

On PM Modi’s target of breaking into top 50 rank, Jaitley said that it is achievable.

“I believe this is doable and therefore these remaining 3-4 areas where work has to be done we will be pushing it with all the greater force,” he added.

The parameters on which India has witnessed an improvement in 2016-17 were making the process faster for starting business, easier access to credit, ease of paying taxes, reduction in time and procedures for obtaining building permit, protecting minority investors, enforcing contracts, trading across borders and making easier for resolving insolvency, the World Bank said.

However, the country still lag behind in areas like enforcing contracts, starting a business and dealing with permits for construction.