Andhra Pradesh tops the list in ease of doing business among all states and UTs

NEW DELHI: Second year in a row, Andhra Pradesh outperformed 28 other states and seven union territories (UTs) to be the best in India to do business in, showed rankings released by the government on Tuesday.

The third edition of the annual ranking of all states and UTs under the Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP) conducted by the industry department and the World Bank showed Telangana and Haryana in second and third spots, while Meghalaya stood last at 36th position.

The ranking is based on 372 action points or reforms undertaken to ease regulation and systems in construction permit, labour regulation, environmental registration, access to information, land availability, and single window system. It is aimed at triggering competition among states to attract investments and improve business climate.


This year, only two states – Jharkhand and Telengana – have been able to implement the full 100% of reforms. However, 17 states have scored above 90%. Moreover, Telangana and West Bengal handheld Tripura and Nagaland, respectively to help them perform better.

“We are putting in efforts to bring in a timeline for all clearances to under seven days through single window system integrated with the CM’s CORE dashboard in a transparent manner,” said Kutumba Rao, Andhra Pradesh Planning Board vice-chairman.

FEEDBACK SCORE
Out of the 372 recommendations, 78 action points will have feedback from the actual users or businesses. This is expected to help the government in checking the pulse of the users before this year’s global ease of doing business rankings roll in come November.

In the latest World Bank Doing Business report, India’s rank improved by a number of notches to 100 among 190 nations. It is for the first time that feedback has been introduced to measure implementation of reforms.

The feedback was collected from over 50,000 of the services professionals such as architects, lawyers and electrical contractors.

The ranking gives equal weightage to reform evidence score and feedback score. The feedback is based on response by private sector to see if the impact of reforms is being felt on the ground. “We want evaluation to be based on feedback by next year,” said Ramesh Abhishek, DIPP secretary.

Going ahead, the department plans to accord more importance to feedback and would change the weightage for questions like those pertaining to single window clearance.