India leaps 30 places to 100th rank in World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ index

New Delhi: India jumped 30 places to the 100th rank among 190 countries in the latest edition of the World Bank’s global rankings on Ease of Doing Business. According to the World Bank Ease of Doing Business 2018 report, India figures among the top 10 countries that have marked an improvement this year, moving up on eight out of 10 Doing Business indicators.
The World Bank said the improvement in ranking for India has come on the back of “sustained business reforms” over the last four years. The new indirect tax regime of Goods and Services Tax was, however, not a part of the report and will be a part of the evaluation process from next year. Demonetization was also not reflected in the report as it was not comparable across countries being a one-time event, World Bank said. Last year, India gained one slot in the World Bank’s rankings, from 131 to 130.
The World Bank said the big improvement in rankings for India has come in the areas of “protecting minority investors”, “getting credit”, “paying taxes” and “resolving insolvency” but it continues to lag in areas such as “starting a business”, “enforcing contracts” and “dealing in construction permits”.
A release by the Bank noted that 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 at 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 an average,” the release said.

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