 "States vie for high score in ease of doing business")
Hours before the Commerce and Industry Ministry is expected to release the final ranking of states according to their ease of doing business, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana are expected to come out as winners.
The states are tied for first place on the ranking by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) which tracks the level of implementation of norms by state governments making it easier to do business.
The results are based on an online dashboard created by the DIPP that tracks implementation in real time. The dashboard updates rankings every time a response by a state is validated by the DIPP. As of Monday, the dashboard showed that apart from Andhra Pradesh and Telengana; the states of Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh were the top five states in this regard.
The dashboard also showed that other states that have implemented more than 90 per cent of all reforms are Haryana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra — in that order.
States traditionally weak in this regard such as Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Meghalaya have scores between 0 and 1 on a scale of 100.
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Originally conceived under the Make In India campaign, a 98-point action plan for easing the regulatory framework for business at the state level was prepared by the DIPP in December 2014. A wider action plan was released in September 2015 covering 340 points.
Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to release the Ease of Doing Business State Report later in the day.
Last week, the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index revealed that India has managed to move up by only one rank in the Doing Business Report 2017. India’s position on five out of 10 parameters also went down, compared to the previous year's rankings.
The government said the ranking failed to take into account the various reform initiatives undertaken by it.
India remains at the 130th position out of 190 countries globally, it was revealed on Tuesday. This is the same as last year, but it qualifies for a single upward movement in rank as India’s position in 2016 has been revised to 131 by the World Bank. There were a total of 189 countries in the 2016 report when India’s position was only four places higher than 134 in the 2015 report.
The rankings come in the backdrop of senior government officials repeatedly saying India’s ranking would be impressive in the 2017 report. It also makes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aim of pushing India among the top 50 nations by the time the 2018 report comes, a bit doubtful. India will have to improve its position by a whopping 80 places to meet the Prime Minister's target in just one year.
