Washington, October 26 (NIA): In the South Asian region, it is easier to do business in Bhutan and Nepal than in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or the Maldives says the latest report of the World Bank on Ease of Doing Business.
Bhutan is in the 73 rd position world wide while Nepal is on 107; followed by Sri Lanka (110), India (130), The Maldives (135), Pakistan (144), Bangladesh (176) and Afghanistan (183).
The report had assessed 190 countries.
India continues to rank low at 130th position in terms of ease of doing business, with the country seeing little or no improvement in dealing with construction permits, getting credit and other parameters, PTI reports..Last year it was at 131. Therefore there has been a marginal improvement.
The government has been making efforts to further improve the ease of doing business and aims to bring the country in the top 50. Expressing disappointment over no change in India’s ranking in the World Bank’s index on ease of doing business, Indian government regretted that the report did not take into consideration 12 key reforms undertaken by the government.
When it comes to ‘distance to frontier’ — a measurement of the gap between an economy’s performance and the best practice score of 100 — India’s score has improved to 55.27 this year from 53.93 last year. India is the only country for which the report has a box dedicated to its ongoing economic reforms. The list of countries in the Doing Business 2017 is topped by New Zealand while Singapore is ranked second.
It is followed by Denmark, Hong Kong, South Korea, Norway, the UK, the US, Sweden and former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Neighbouring Pakistan is ranked 144th in the list. On the basis of reforms undertaken, the top 10 improvers are Brunei Darussalam, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Belarus, Indonesia, Serbia, Georgia, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
A record 137 economies around the world have adopted key reforms that make it easier to start and operate small and medium-sized businesses, the report said. Developing countries carried out more than 75 per cent of the 283 reforms in the past year, with Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for over one-quarter of all reforms, it added.
“What we have seen is a remarkable effort on the part of the government to implement business reforms. It looks like we are going to have to wait for another year or so. But the direction of change is fundamentally a very significant one,” Global Indicators Group Director Augusto Lopez-Claros told PTI in an interview.
Ramesh Abhishek of the Indian Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) said a dozen of important reforms like enactment of bankruptcy code, GST, introduction of single window system for building plan approvals and online registrations were not “recognised by the World Bank this year”.
On when India will be able to achieve the target of improving its ranking to the top 50, as desired by the Prime Minister, Abhishek said, “We will achieve the target but will not be able to tell the timeline”.
