HYDERABAD: The State government cried foul over the announcement of the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) rankings, in which the Telangana stood in second place after the first ranker Andhra Pradesh. “There are mistakes in the calculation of EoDB rankings. If they are done perfectly, the TS should have got the first rank along with AP,” said the officials of the State government. According to highly placed sources, Chief Secretary SK Joshi recently wrote a letter expressing the State’s discontentment to the Union government. However, there is no response from either the Ministry of Commerce or the Centre. “When the top officials of TS Industries wanted to meet the Ministry of Commerce officials to raise their issue, they are not being given any appointment,” sources in the government told Express on Saturday.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) released the EoDB rankings on July 10. As per the rankings, AP stood in the first, Telangana in second and Haryana in third. The evaluation is spread over 372 reform action points. For 2018 rankings, the evaluation has two components - implementation and feedback from users. The final score is a combination of the implementation score and the feedback score. The DIPP had declared the feedback and evaluation methodology in August, 2017. “With computer tools, one would expect that the calculations would be simple and accurate. However, a closer look at the figures revealed that several mistakes were committed by the jury while arriving at the final scores and thereby the rankings,” official sources explained.
“For example, take the case of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. For Telangana, out of 372 questions, 4 were found to be not applicable so the evaluation was on the basis of 368 questions. Telangana implemented all 368 questions and achieved 100% implementation score. On the 78 feedback questions, Telangana got 83.95% feedback score. Each of the 78 questions, 0.5 marks was given for implementation and depending upon the feedback, maximum of 0.5 marks for feedback. For example if out of 5 users from whom response is taken, 4 say that reforms is implemented, then the score on feedback would be ½ X (4/5) = ½ X 0.8 = 0.4. For questions where no feedback was taken, one mark was awarded if reforms was implemented and zero, if reforms is not implemented,” the sources explained.
Thus, in case of Telangana, since they implemented 368 reforms ( 290 without feedback and 78 with feedback) total marks due to implementation is 290 X 1 + 0.5 X 78 ( Since in case of feedback question 0.5 marks is for implementation and 0.5 marks for feedback) i.e, 329. For feedback out of maximum 39 marks (78 X 0.5) Telangana got 83.95 % or 32.741 (39 X 0.8395).