India is unlikely to be affected by irregularities reported by the World Bank in data for preparing the Ease of Doing Business ranking. On Thursday, World Bank informed about the data irregularity and announced pausing the publication of the Doing Business report

India stands at 63 out of 190 countries in the Ease of Doing Business ranking. Its ranking improved from 142 in 2014 to 63 in 2020. Now, with more and more reform measures, its plan is to climb further in ranking to get placed among the top 50.

Also read: Legal reforms needed for ease of business

‘Other countries’

“The incidence of data irregularity is related with China, Saudi Arab, UAE and Azerbaijan,” a source said while making it clear that India has not figured anywhere. There is apprehension that data were manipulated to show higher ranking. World Bank, in a statement on Thursday, 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.

‘Internal audit’

Reiterating the integrity and impartiality of data and analysis as paramount the World Bank said it is conducting a systematic review and assessment of data changes that occurred subsequent to the institutional data review process for the last five Doing Business reports. “We have asked the World Bank Group’s independent Internal Audit function to perform an audit of the processes for data collection and review for Doing Business and the controls to safeguard data integrity,” it said.

It said it will act based on the findings and will retrospectively correct the data of countries that were most affected by the irregularities. The Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank has been briefed on the situation as have the authorities of the countries that were most affected by the data irregularities.

According to the now-withdrawn World Bank report, the economies with the most notable improvement in Doing Business 2020 were Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Togo, Bahrain, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, China, India and Nigeria. In 2018-2019, these countries implemented one-fifth of all the reforms recorded worldwide.