India jumps 30 places in ease of doing business index: 8 observations in World Bank report
India has moved 30 places up from its previous ranking of the 130, the ease of doing business report showed, adding that eight reforms were helping businesses in 2016/17.
Doing business in India has become significantly easier on the back of the government decisions including a bankruptcy law and other reforms, a World Bank report said on Tuesday.
India has moved 30 places up from its previous ranking of the 130, the ease of doing business report showed, adding that eight reforms were helping businesses in 2016/17.
Here are a few observations of the report:
1) India stands out this year as one of the 10 economies that improved the most in the areas measured by Doing Business. With eight reforms making it easier to do business in 2016/17, India was the only economy in South Asia to join the list. El Salvador, Malawi, Nigeria and Thailand are also part of the top 10 improvers.
2) Within South Asia, India has the highest score (80) for protecting minority investors compared to Afghanistan’s score of 10.
3) India made obtaining a building permit faster by implementing an online Single Window System for the approval of building plans.
4) India streamlined the business incorporation process by introducing the SPICe form (INC-32) that which combined the application for the Permanent Account Number (PAN) and the Tax Account Number (TAN) into a single submission.
5) Following improvements to the online system in 2016, the time needed to complete the applications for Employee’s Provident Fund Organization and the Employee’s State Insurance Corporation decreased. The joint application for the Mumbai Value Added Tax and the Profession Tax also was fully implemented in January 2017.
6) India strengthened access to credit by amending the rules on priority of secured creditors outside reorganization proceedings and adopting a new insolvency and bankruptcy code that introduced a reorganization procedure for corporate debtors.
7) In trading across borders, India reduced border compliance time by improving infrastructure at the Nhava Sheva Port in Mumbai. Export and import border compliance costs were also reduced in both Delhi and Mumbai after merchant overtime fees were abolished.
8) India introduced the Income Computation and Disclosure Standards (ICDS) in 2016 to standardize the methods of computing taxable income and other tax accounting standards. Data gathering became more automated in India due to the use of modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.