NEW DELHI: In the World Bank’s latest Ease of Doing Business rankings, India has climbed 23 places to the 77th spot for 2018. With this year’s jump, India has improved its rank by 53 positions in the last two years, and 65 positions in the last four years.
The Work Bank said in its report that India had improved its rank in six out of 10 indicators and had moved closer to international best practices (Distance to Frontier score) on seven out of 10 indicators.
The major boost in this year’s ranking was achieved from the indicator ‘Construction Permits’, where India’s rank improved from 181 in 2017 to 52 in 2018, and significant improvement was seen in ‘Trading across Borders’, where the rank improved by 66 positions, from 146 in 2017 to 80 in 2018. However, enforcement of contracts still remains poor at 163.
Among the BRICS nations, only China, which was last year ranked 78th, registered a bigger jump in ranking to grab the 46th place. India also emerged as the easiest place to do business in South Asia, thanks to the feedback the Bank received from Delhi and Mumbai, where it conducts its study along with departments at the state and Centre. India is also labelled as one of the biggest improvers in this year’s list, which is topped by Afghanistan.
Among the 190 countries, the top spots in the ranking was retained by New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark, which held their first, second and third spots, respectively, for a second consecutive year.
The annual report, which ranks countries on business friendliness and absence of bureaucratic red tape couldn’t have come at a better for the government, which is struggling with a weakening rupee and high fuel prices, and is involved in a spat with its central bank.
The government expects the ranking to improve. “When we came to power, the PM had said that we have to come within the top 50 ranks. Today, we are at rank 77. Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has worked on how to up the ranking on each criterion. You have to crack the code and try and improve on the criterion in which we lack,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said.