Govt to take companies' feedback for ease of business ranking of states

The Commerce Ministry on Thursday said it will take feedback from businesses on implementation of reforms carried out by states while ranking them on ease of doing business this year.

The ministry said the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) will carry out a comprehensive business-to- government feedback exercise this year.

As part of the exercise, "feedback will be taken from businesses on the quality of implementation of the reforms claimed by the states and UTs," it said.

It added that the feedback scores will be used to generate a ranking of states/UTs in terms of reform implementation.

"Such a ranking will be different from the last year's ranking, which was a ranking of de jure reforms (or reforms based on evidence submitted by states)," the Commerce and Industry Ministry said.

The DIPP, with the help of the World Bank, ranks states in terms of ease of doing business. The exercise was started in 2015. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana jointly topped the chart last year.

This year, the rankings would be based on a 405-point Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP) spread across 12 reform areas such as labour regulation enablers, contract enforcement and property registration.

It said this year there are 103 new set of reforms (out of 405) which include central inspection system, online land allotment, online single window system for granting construction permits and approval for boiler manufacturers.

This year, BRAP also includes two new sectors -- healthcare and hospitality. The last date for states to implement these reform is October 31.

The online portal would be soon be enabled to allow states/UTs to upload the reforms implemented along with the evidence, it added.