Andhra tops Centre's ease of doing business index

Andhra Pradesh topped the ease of doing business index for states, prepared by the Centre and the World Bank.

Telangana, which scored the highest points last year, was relegated to the second position.

Industrial states of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu were at a remote 13th and 15th positions, respectively, but Gujarat came at fifth position and Karnataka was at eighth place in the list of 18 top-scorers, which included West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The ease of doing business index is jointly prepared by the Commerce Ministry and the World Bank. The latter will come out with its own ease of doing business report in a few days. Last year (ranking for 2016), India achieved the 100th position, from an earlier 130th in 2015.

The idea behind ranking states is to induce competition to attract investment and improve the business climate, an official involved with the exercise said.

The ranking is done on 372 parameters that include regulatory processes, policies, practices and procedures spread across 12 reform areas. One of the parameters included was paying taxes, since new reform points have been added post implementation of GST.

In this year’s edition of rankings, the Centre carried out a comprehensive business-to-government feedback exercise and a response was taken from businesses, architects and Bar Councils of states and UTs on the quality of implementation of the reforms by states.

Jharkhand scored 100% in “reform evidence”.

The Commerce Ministry, which takes up the exercise of ranking the states, said that 17 states have achieved a reform evidence score of more than 90%, and 15 have achieved a combined score of 90% and more.

“The states which have achieved 80% or more reforms evidence score represent 84% of the country’s area, 90% of the country’s population and 79% of India’s GDP,” it said.

The national capital Delhi’s score came at 33.99%, from 47% in 2016, and it stood at the 23rd spot in this year's rankings.

The North Eastern states, except Assam, continued to be at the bottom of the ladder.