Judicial reforms next frontier to improve EoDB ranking: Economic Survey

Even as India jumped 30 places to break into the top 100 countries on ease of doing business for the first time, the next frontier is addressing pendency, delays and backlogs in the appellate and judicial arenas, according to the Economic Survey for 2017-18.

It added that India's ranking would get a further boost by implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) which was not taken account of in this year's report.

India jumped 30 places to break into the top 100 for the first time in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Report (EoDB), 2018.

According to the Economic Survey 2017-18, tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday, the judicial pendency, delays and backlogs were hampering dispute resolution and contract enforcement, discouraging investment, stalling projects and hampering tax collections.

The Survey report said they were also stressing tax payers, and escalating legal costs.

"The government's efforts to make business and commerce easy have been widely acknowledged. The next frontier on the ease of doing business is addressing pendency, delays and backlogs in the appellate and judicial arenas," it said.

The Survey report said that coordinated action between government and the judiciary would address the "law's delay" and boost economic activity.

"Pendency, delays and injunctions are overburdening courts and severely impacting the progress of cases, especially economic cases, through the different tiers of the appellate and judicial arenas.

"The government and the courts need to both work together for largescale reforms and incremental improvements to combat a problem that is exacting a large toll from the economy," it said.

India leaped 53 and 33 spots in the taxation and insolvency indices, respectively, on the back of administrative reforms in taxation and passage of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

"It also made strides on protecting minority investors and obtaining credit, and retained a high rank on getting electricity, after a 70 spot rise in EODB, 2017 due to the government's electricity reforms," the Survey report said.

It added that the rankings reflect the government's reform measures on a wide range of indicators.

--IANS

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