New Delhi: India has vaulted 30 spots to reach the 100th place in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings in a sound endorsement of the string of reforms implemented by the Narendra Modi government.
The World Bank report on 190 economies published on Tuesday showed that the country took tremendous strides to move forward from the 130th position it held during the last two years.
The report also recognised India as one of the top 10 improvers in this year’s assessment, having implemented reforms in eight out of 10 Doing Business indicators.
World Bank vice-president for South Asia told reporters on Tuesday that the results signaled that not only had India been ready and open for business, as it had been for many decades, it was now competing as the preferred place to do business globally.
"Starting a business is now faster," Dixon said, adding that India had strengthened access to credit system and made it easier to procure construction permits.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, citing the report, said that India was the only major country to have been named for undertaking structural reforms by the World Bank. "Biggest jump India got in the ease of doing business was on taxation reforms," he said.
He said that this was the biggest-ever jump recorded by the country on the Doing Business rankings.
"These 10 parameters are so tough that you don't get credit for the reforms introduced till you actually see their results on the ground," he said, adding that the World Bank's cut-off date for considering performance is June of every year.
Listing the areas which had boosted India's ranking, Jaitley said that on "protection of minority investors" India had come up to fourth place on account of reforms like bringing in the Companies Act and setting up of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
The Finance Minister noted that both on "ease of getting credit" and "electricity connections" India has come up to the 29th position this year.
"On resolving insolvency, we were 136... then we brought in the Bankruptcy Code and now we have climbed 33 places to 103rd position," he said.
The World Bank, however, noted that India lagged in areas such as "starting a business", "enforcing contracts" and "dealing with construction permits."
The Bank's report excluded the impact of PM Modi's shocking move to withdraw high-value currency notes last November, and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Reuters reported.
The World Bank report, covering the period from June 2 last year to June 1 this year, ranked India top among the South Asian nations.
"This year's remarkable results are the culmination of efforts that have taken place over the past three years, so you can extrapolate forward and see that steps that are taken this year may take 2-3 years to show up in the results," Dixon said.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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