India ranks 142 in latest "Ease of Doing Business" report: World Bank

NEW DELHI: India has slipped further on the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ index, at 142 among 189 countries as on June 1 from 134 last year, but the global lender has taken care to distance from this slide the Narendra Modiled NDA government which took charge barely a week earlier and soon set about improving the country’s business environment and perception among overseas investors.

"We do not want to send the impression that the drop in India’s ranking is connected in any way with the current political situation (government)," Augusto Lopez-Claros, director, Global Indicators Group, Development Economics, World Bank Group said about the latest ranking released on Wednesday. Singapore retained the top spot in the ranking, followed by New Zealand, Hong Kong, Denmark and South Korea.

The NDA government has announced a series of measures to fast-track decisionmaking, reduce regulatory compliance burden and bring down cost of doing business, setting itself the goal of improving India’s rank to within top 50 on this widely followed index."World Bank has used the data till May 2014, whereas most measures to improve doing business were undertaken subsequent to that, from June end," a senior government official said.

"We are now making structural changes towards business process re-engineering using a digital platform. Our target must be to come into the top 50. A lot of work has already started. It will be visible in the next year’s doing business rankings," added the official, requesting anonymity.

India’s ranking slipped even as its score was higher at 53.7, as a result of having undertaken three reforms, since the other countries reformed at a faster pace.


"The current ranking is relative to other countries and depends on the pace with which we take on these reforms. Going forward, India will not just have to improve on several parameters of doing business but also improve faster than other countries so as to improve its position in the overall ranking," DK Pant of India Ratings said.

While India made starting a business easier by considerably reducing the registration fees, it also made it more difficult by introducing a requirement to file a declaration before the commencement of business operations, the report said.

The World Bank has made changes to how the rankings are compiled by increasing the number of indicators and extending the coverage to Delhi, the second largest business city in the country, which has also been taken into account this year along with Mumbai.

There was some good news, too, for India, with the report pointing out that the country follows the largest share of the good practices measured by the new indices introduced to capture protection of minority investors. These are extent of shareholder rights, strength of governance structure and extent of corporate transparency.

"Among 189 economies worldwide, India follows the largest share of the good practices measured by the new indices," the reported noted, putting India at the seventh place.Joshi of Crisil said India should figure higher in the rankings next year as attempts are being made to improve the business environment in the country.