Government hopeful of improving 'ease of doing business' rank

NEW DELHI: The commerce and industry ministry today expressed hope of improving India's ranking in ease of doing business on account of several steps taken by both Centre and States.

"Ease of doing business is one of the priorities of the government. In the World Bank report, we have improved to 130th and this year also we hope to make some improvement because enormous amount of work is being done by central governments ministries, departments and states," Secretary in Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion ( DIPP) Ramesh Abhishek said here at a function.

He was speaking at Ficci's 'Tourism Investors Meet'.

India's rank in the World Bank's Doing Business Report 2016 was was up at 130th from 134th slot in the previous year.

He said making the environment investor-friendly would help attract more investments in tourism sector, among others.

The sector holds huge potential in terms of attracting investments, creating jobs and pushing overall economic growth of the country, he said.

Abhishek said 100 per cent foreign direct investment ( FDI) is permitted through automatic route in the sector and in the last two years, the country has attracted USD 2 billion investments.

The Tourism Ministry will now closely work with ' Invest India' to facilitate and promote investments.

He also said startups can help find solutions to the problems being faced by the sector.

The secretary also urged the industry to provide inputs to give impetus to the tourism industry.

Seeking improvement in India's ranking in the ease of doing business index, government officials have recently given a detailed presentation to a World Bank team on the steps being taken to improve the country's business climate.