India Inc too shares Govt’s anguish about World bank’s dirty tricks

India being ranked 130 by the World Bank’s latest ‘Doing Business’ report does not fully reflect the significant transformation in the overall business environment following government reforms, industry bodies said on Wednesday. They observed however that the position may improve significantly with the proposed roll out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from next April as well as the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, likely to be implemented by coming December. “The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings are incompletely reflective of the significant transformation in the overall business environment in key areas such as openness to FDI, online procedures, MSME facilitation and so on,” CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said.

The Modi government, he said, has undertaken a strategic and comprehensive reform package over the last two and a half years which has greatly contributed to strengthening investor confidence. “Certain reforms such as legislation of the GST, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and others may not have come within the World Bank’s deadline of June 1. I am sure that the EODB rankings will align with the actual simplification and changes on the ground from next year onwards,” Banerjee said. 

In the World Bank’s latest ‘Doing Business’ 2017 report, India’s place remained unchanged from last year’s original ranking of 130 among the 190 economies that were assessed on various parameters. But the last year’s ranking has been revised to 131 from which the country has improved its place by one spot.