New Delhi: India’s business climate has continuously improved over the years and the government will work “tirelessly” to make India one of the easiest countries to invest in, Niti Aayog chief executive officer Amitabh Kant told ThePrint, a day after World Bank suspended its ease of doing business rankings citing data irregularities.
On Thursday, World Bank announced that it is pausing its ease of doing business index after it detected data irregularities in its indices for two years. It said that the authorities of the countries that were most affected by the data irregularities have been informed. However, it remains unclear if India is among these countries.
India’s improvement in the ease of doing business index has often been quoted by the Narendra Modi government as one of its major achievements.
The country’s ranking improved to 63 in the now suspended index for 2020 released last year, as compared to its ranking of 134 before the Modi government came to power in 2014.
India was among the 10 countries with the most notable improvement in the 2020 index.
“India’s business climate has been continuously improving, not for World Bank’s Index sake but to make India easy and simple,” Kant told ThePrint in a text message.
“All of us in Government will continue to work tirelessly to ensure efficient and effective norms for MSMEs, businesses, startups & entrepreneurs & make India one of the easiest countries to invest & create wealth in,” he added.
The Modi government has taken many steps to improve the ease of doing business over the last few years, including making it easy for firms to start and shut a business and pay taxes. It has also moved to decriminalise laws and completely do away with many obsolete ones, besides introducing the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act, and shifting the entire tax payment and assessment system online.
The 2020 index had said that India fared badly in enforcing contracts and registering property.
An analysis by Teamlease Compliance showed in July that ease of doing business still remains a work in progress. It said that the Indian regulatory landscape has 1536 Acts, more than 69,233 compliances and 6,618 regulatory filings across the Centre and states.
Integrity and impartiality of data paramount
In its statement, the World Bank said the integrity and impartiality of data and analysis is paramount, adding that it is conducting a systematic review and assessment of data changes for the last five Doing Business reports.
“We will act based on the findings and will retrospectively correct the data of countries that were most affected by the irregularities,” it said.
“A number of irregularities have been reported regarding changes to the data in the Doing Business 2018 and Doing Business 2020 reports, published in October 2017 and 2019. The changes in the data were inconsistent with the Doing Business methodology,” World Bank added.
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