India 25 notches up on global competitiveness index

New Delhi: India has advanced 25 places to rank 57th globally in a competitiveness index tracking structural and pro-competitive reforms, as per a report released by the Competere Foundation.

The report assesses India's performance under its Market Distortions Performance Index, examining the country's reform trajectory between 2010 and 2023, and attributes the improvement to sustained efforts in reducing market distortions and strengthening competitiveness, the commerce and industry ministry said in a statement.

The report, titled ‘India’s Next Growth Frontier’, evaluates market distortions across three broad pillars—property rights protection, domestic competition and international competition, and underlines the importance of maintaining an evidence-based and effects-oriented approach to competition policy.


“It highlights reforms such as the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), improvements in the regulatory environment and the modernisation of trade facilitation systems. It also examines developments relating to competition, investment conditions, digital markets and external regulatory barriers affecting India's competitiveness and participation in international trade,” the ministry said.

As per the report, the strongest improvement appears in the domestic conditions that shape how firms enter, operate, invest, reorganize assets, and compete inside India's own market. That matters because domestic regulation has historically been one of the principal constraints identified in India's market-distortions profile.

“This matters because India's low starting position was particularly affected by domestic regulation and internal market frictions. Over the review period, India made significant progress in the domestic institutional environment,” it said.

The Foundation has recommended India to continue to defend its exporters against unnecessary or disproportionate foreign regulatory barriers, especially where sanitary and phytosanitary or technical rules operate as disguised restrictions on market access.

“India should review sectoral foreign-investment caps, government approval routes, sourcing mandates, and business-model restrictions against their effects on entry, scale, consumer welfare, investment, and productivity,” it suggested, adding that retail and e-commerce restrictions in terms of logistics efficiency, supplier access, consumer prices, technology diffusion, and small-business participation, should also be assessed.