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India has moved up 23 rungs to grab the 77th spot among 190 countries in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business global index announced on Wednesday.
This is the second successive year that the country has vaulted up the keenly watched ranking. Last year, it had shot up 30 positions to make it into the league of the top 100 countries.
“India has been recognised among the top ten improvers for the second consecutive year,” said Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, while giving a presentation on the World Bank’s Doing Business report for 2019. India is now the highest-ranked country in South Asia.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Prime Minister’s vision that India should figure in the top 50 is eminently realisable.
China’s performance was even better: it moved 30 spots to 46th place. While India’s steady improvement reflects an improvement in the business environment, it’s worth nothing that it is based on feedback from just Delhi and Mumbai.
The top three this year are New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark, which retain their first, second and third spots, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Georgia, Norway, the US, the UK and FYR Macedonia.
Hits and misses
The top area of improvement for India was in dealing with construction permits (its ranking improved to 52 from 181), followed by trading across borders (ranked 80th this year from 146). While the third-biggest improvement in ranking was in the area of starting a business, it is still at 137th place, from 156th last year.
India’s performances in getting credit, getting electricity and enforcing contracts also improved.
On four counts — paying taxes, resolving insolvency, enforcing contracts and protecting minority investors — India made little improvement.
The government, however, is positive of improvement in all four areas next year. “While GST implementation has been acknowledged, only partial impact has been taken into account. But improvement is expected to be factored next year,” Abhishek said commenting on the area of paying taxes. Ranking in resolving insolvency is expected to improve as more insolvent companies opt for reorganisation rather than insolvency, dedicated commercial courts would result in better enforcement of contracts while digitisation would ease process of property registration, he added.
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