Ease of doing business: Andhra Pradesh tops ranking; Telangana and Haryana follow

Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Nara Lokesh said: “Andhra Pradesh has the most transparent and investor-friendly industrial policy in the country and that is why we consistently ranked top in ease of doing business. This is the great achievement for Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu,”

Meanwhile, Telangana IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said: “Telangana has consistently done well in ease of doing business with its industrial policy called Telangana Industrial Approval and Self-Certification System (Ti-Pass). We have always outperformed other states in ease of doing business with our business-friendly policies.”

DIPP, in collaboration with the World Bank, conducts this annual reform exercise for all states and Union territories under the Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP). “A large number of states have made significant progress in reforms suggested in BRAP 2017,” the DIPP said in its statement.

The assessment under the BRAP 2017 is based on a combined score consisting of ‘reform evidence score’ that is based on evidence uploaded by states and Union territories as well as ‘feedback score’ that is based on response garnered from the actual users of the services provided to the businesses.

It is for the first time that DIPP has introduced taking feedback to ensure that the reforms have actually reached ground-level. “The feedback was collected through face-to-face interviews of actual users selected from more than 50,000 users of the services provided by the state and union territories’ governments. 78 reforms out of 372 were identified for the survey. More than 5,000 private sector users in 23 States and UTs, including 4,300 businesses and 800 architects, lawyers and electrical contractors from across the country shared their experience,” the DIPP stated.

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion added that 17 states have achieved a reform evidence score of more than 90 per cent and 15 have achieved a combined score of 90 per cent and more. “The states which have achieved 80 per cent or more reforms evidence score represent 84 per cent of the country’s area, 90 per cent of the country’s population and 79 per cent of India’s GDP,” the DIPP stated. Number of reform actions implemented under BRAP 2017 increased to 7,758 from 2,532 in 2015.

DIPP has already shared proposed reforms for the next year with the state and Union territory governments. “As systems developed in the last three years have matured during the existing assessment cycles and the importance of the feedback from the users and success of obtaining user feedback in BRAP, 2017 has been proved, the next year’s assessment will be entirely based on user feedback,” the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion stated.