India has jumped 23 places to the 77th position, on the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ ranking. In its annual ‘Doing Business’ 2019 report, the World Bank said India improved its rank on six out of the 10 parameters relating to starting and doing business in a country. Grant of a construction permit, trading across the borders, starting a business, getting credit, getting electricity and enforcing contracts, showed improvement.
Buoyed by the improvement, finance minister Arun Jaitley said the country can break into the top 50, if it made it easier to start a business and improved on contract enforcement. India was ranked 142nd among 190 nations when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014. At that time, the country was battling perceptions of excess red-tape and policy paralysis. Four years of reform pushed up India’s rank to 100th in World Bank’s ‘Doing Business 2018 report. It was 130th in 2017, when it was ranked lower than Iran and Uganda.
The World Bank put India among the top 10 economies to make the most improvements, saying it focused on streamlining business processes. India, it said, made starting a business easier by integrating multiple application forms into a general incorporation form. “India also replaced the value-added tax with the GST (Goods and Services Tax), for which the registration process is faster,” it said. Also, “India made paying taxes easier by replacing many indirect taxes with a single indirect tax, the GST, for the entire country. India also made paying taxes less costly, by reducing the corporate income tax rate and the employees’ provident funds scheme rate paid by the employer,”.
Courtesy/By: Shubham Mathur
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11 Nov 2018
