Agencies
New Delhi, Oct 31: India has improved its ranking in World Bank’s ease of doing business index, driven by reforms in access to credit, power supply and protection of minority investors. The latest report shows that India has moved up from 130 to 100.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters that this was the “highest jump any country has made in the doing business rankings”. In “resolving insolvency” parameters, India has jumped 33 places and is now ranked 103, he added.
In its annual report “Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs”, the World Bank said that India’s ranking reflects nearly half of the 37 reforms, adopted since 2003, implemented in the last four years.
The ranking, however, does not take into account business environment post implementation of GST, which weaved the country of 1.3 billion into one market with one tax and removed inter-state barriers for trade.
“India has improved a lot (this year), but there’s still room for improvement, So, I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as a nice place to do business yet, but definitely is in the right direction to become a nice place. It is much easier than it was two years ago,” Rita Ramalho, acting Director for World Bank’s Global Indicators Group, said.
In the last report, India ranked at 130 out of the 190 countries evaluated, advancing just one spot from the previous year’s 131. The rankings are determined on 10 parameters.
Besides implementation of the roll-out of GST from July 1, the government has considerably eased procedures for setting up businesses in the country.
The insolvency and bankruptcy law too has been operationalised, which paved way for speedier exit of failed businesses.
Last October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked the top officials to study the report to analyse areas requiring reforms and improvement.
The government has been making efforts to further improve ease of doing business and aims to bring the country in the top 50.
