India jumps 14 places up, ranks 63rd, in 2019 Ease of Doing Business Ranking
India continued to be among the world’s top ten improvers in business-related reforms for the third consecutive year, the World Bank said in its Doing Business 2020 study.
India has climbed 14 places up, reaching the 63rd position, in the latest World Bank Ease of Doing Business rankings. For the third consecutive year, the country continued to be among the world’s top ten improvers in business-related reforms.
India was ranked 77 in the last year’s ranking.
With a total of 59 regulatory reforms in 2018-19, the country this year accounted for one-fifth of all the reforms recorded worldwide. Majority of them were in areas of starting a business, dealing with construction permits, trading across borders and resolving insolvency.
According to the Doing Business 2020 study, which ranks 190 countries, India still performs poor in areas such as enforcing contracts (163rd) and registering property (154th).
India’s performance is assessed based on surveys conducted among businesses in Mumbai and Delhi. The country got a score of 71 out of 100.
“India’s impressive progression in the Doing Business rankings over the past few years is a tremendous achievement, especially for an economy that is as large and complex as India’s,” said Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director in India.
“The focus now needs to be on continuing this trend to maintain and improve its ranking.”
According to the report, the recovery rate of credits in India increased from 26.5 to 71.6 cents on the dollar since 2016, after the country established a modern insolvency regime.
It said that this paved the way for gradual increase in the number of reorganizations, despite some implementation challenges. Now the country is the best performer in South Asia on credit recovery. It also does better than the average for OECD high-income economies.
Importing and exporting have become easier, with the country doing significantly better than the regional average, and ranking 68th globally.
But registering a property in India still takes 58 days and costs on average 7.8% of a property’s value. This is longer and at greater cost than among OECD high-income economies.
The report also pointed out that it takes 1,445 days for a company to resolve a commercial dispute through a local first-instance court, almost three times the average time in OECD high-income economies.
New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong were the top 3 in the rankings. Among India’s neighbours, China was ranked 31 (77.9), Bangladesh 168 (45.0), Pakistan 108 (61.0), and Sri Lanka 99 (61.8)