'Regulatory burden from States affecting India's business environment'
Tough regulatory measures make India a difficult place to do business and the country needs concerted action on several fronts to improve business environment, said Onno Ruhl, Country Director, World Bank. “A disproportionately high regulatory burden is borne by businesses in India today. This difficult regulatory burden is exemplified by India’s current rank of 142 among 189 nations in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2015 study. “The stark reality is that India remains a difficult place to do business,” said the World Bank Director in his foreward to a study titled ‘Assessment of State Implementation of Business Reforms’. According to the study released on Monday, India does not feature among the top 100 countries on 8 of the 10 indicators reviewed. While the country stands at 7th and 32nd positions in Getting Credit and Protecting Minority Investors respectively, it ranks among the bottom 10 on ‘Dealing with Construction Permits and Enforcing Contracts’. “The growth of business in India requires concerted action on several fronts – infrastructure, capital markets, trade facilitation and skills. Thus the need of the day is reform, and the reforms must be led by the government at both Central and state levels,” Ruhl said. Appreciating the Indian government’s efforts towards improving India’s ranking in the Doing Business Report, Ruhl said, “much more is required to be done at state governments’ level to achieve the Prime Minister’s vision of making India an easy place to do business.” The study observed that a majority of the regulatory burden imposed on businesses in India is due to the plethora of laws, rules, regulations and procedures enforced by states. “This gives rise to a wide number of registrations, licenses and NOCs that businesses must obtain and file compliance returns on.” The assessment takes stock of reforms implemented by states during January- June, 2015 based on the 98-point action plan for business reforms agreed between DIPP and state and Union territory governments on December 29, 2014. The study has ranked Gujarat as the top state followed by Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand. It said that states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan have implemented over 50% of the 98-point action plan business reforms. Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh are also among the top 10 states in the assessment. The study was conducted jointly by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, the World Bank Group and KPMG as the knowledge partner, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
September 15, 2015 | 2:10pm IST.
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