India aims to be among 30 in ease of doing business index

With an ambitious target of making it to top 30 countries of the World Bank’s ease of doing business in the next three years, India’s Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion held a meeting with the World Bank officials and sought help to achieve the target within the timeframe.

India’s rank in the World Bank’s ease of doing business was 142nd out of 189 countries, well below Sri Lanka’s 99 and Pakistan’s 128. The ranking was created based on 10 different parameters, including starting a business, gaining construction permits, paying taxes, getting electricity and enforcing contracts.

India has started to prepare further roadmap to climb up the ranking table next year, as it is confident of making into top 100 in this year’s list.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, since it came into power in May last year, has taken several steps to improve ease of doing business in India. Some of the significant ones include reducing the number of forms for imports and exports to three from earlier seven to nine, and allowing foreign companies to integrate online with 14 government services on a single-window portal.

Foreign direct investment in India grew by more than double to $3.6 billion in April from $1.7 billion last year.

Earlier, an eight-member World Bank team met government officials on July 6, in which it pointed out that enforcing contracts was an area of concern for India. The agenda of the meeting was to highlight key issues in improving ease of doing business in the country.

They identified target, set deadlines and assessed the progress already made on this issue. The members also took note of global best practices that could be implemented in India. The officials expected India to achieve a substantial improvement in its rankings.

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