India breaks into first 100 in World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Ranking
New Delhi, Oct 31: Taking a big leap forward India has broken into first 100 in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Ranking. It is a straight jump of 30 notches from last year. This achievement has endorsed the string of economic reforms being implemented by the Narendra Modi government, said Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley here on Tuesday.
The Finance Minister addressing a press conference in the evening said that the report also recognised India as one of the top 10 improvers in this year’s assessment, having implemented reforms in eight out of 10 Doing Business indicators.
Jaitley said that India had always been at 130 to 140 positions in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Ranking. In 2014 the ranking was 142 while in 2015 it was 131 and in 2016 it stood at 130.
This year India took a straight jump of 30 notches to break into the first 100 ranking, the Finance Minister said terming it as a big achievement of the Indian economy despite increasing criticism by the Congress and other opposition parties. “30 point jump is the highest ever jump taken by any country in Ease of Doing Business Ranking”, Jaitley said.
The PMO also tweeted on this achievement of the Indian Economy.
India's real or inflation-adjusted GDP growth has sharply moderated to 5.7 percent in Apri-June, the slowest in 13 quarters, amid lingering effects of demonetization and an untidy rollout of a nation-state goods and services tax (GST) from July 1.
India performs well in the areas of Protecting Minority Investors, Getting Credit, and Getting Electricity. The country’s corporate law and securities regulations have been recognized as highly advanced, placing India in fourth place in the global ranking on Protecting Minority Investors.
And the time to obtain an electricity connection in Delhi has dropped from 138 days four years ago to 45 days now, almost 20 days less than the 78 days average in OECD high-income economies. India places 29th in the global ranking on the Getting Electricity indicator.
While there has been substantial progress, India still lags in areas such as Starting a Business, Enforcing Contracts, and Dealing with Construction Permits. In fact, the time taken to enforce a contract is longer today, at 1,445 days, than it was 15 years ago (1,420 days), placing the country in 164th place in the global ranking on the Enforcing Contracts indicator.
In Starting a Business, India has reduced the time needed to register a new business to 30 days now, from 127 days 15 years ago. However, the number of procedures is still cumbersome for local entrepreneurs who still need to go through 12 procedures to start a business in Mumbai, which is considerably more than in OECD high-income economies, where it takes five procedures on average.