DOING BUSINESS IN INDIA: EASIER THAN EVER BEFORE
The World Bank’ s Ease of Doing Business index’ sfi gures for 2018 recorded a jump of 30 places in India’ s ranking. India is now amongst the top100 countries, out of the 190 nations surveyed. India is the fi rst ever country to record such a high jump in the ratings.
By definition, the Ease of Doing Business index ranks 190 countries based on 10 indicators that carry an equal weight. These are: Protecting Minority Investors, Getting Credit, Getting Electricity, Resolving Insolvency, Paying Taxes, Trading across Borders, Registering Property, Starting a Business, Enforcing Contracts and Dealing with Construction Permits.
India is ranked 4th in terms of Protecting Minority Investors in 2018. It ranks 29th in terms of Getting Credit as well as Electricity. In fact, India has shown improvement in most of these indicators as compared to 2017. For instance, the Indian economy has improved its spot to 103 in terms of Resolving Insolvency, one of the most promising indicators, up from 136 in 2017. Further, the biggest jump of 53 places is displayed in the Paying Taxes indicator, with India moving up to 119th spot owing to its fast progress with regard to tax reforms. India is one of the top five reformers, improving its score in six out of the ten criteria used by the World Bank for measuring the ease of doing business.
This rating, however, is not a surprise. The Government of India has been consistently undertaking positive growth-oriented steps to achieve it. Some of these are extensive exercises in terms of stakeholder consultations, identification of user needs, government process re-engineering to match rules and procedures with user expectations and streamlining them to create a more conducive business environment. Acknowledging India’ s reform trajectory under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’ s leadership,
28 • INDIA-OMAN • 2018