Stakeholders' feedback helps improve biz climate: DIPP Secy

Initiatives based on feedback from stakeholders have helped in significantly improving investment climate in the country which is reflected in the World Bank's latest report on ease of doing business, a top official today said.
As per the World Bank's doing business report 2018, India's rank improved to 100th from 130th last year out of 190 countries.
Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Ramesh Abhishek said that this year, since November the ministry started meeting stakeholders and taking feedback from them on the reform measures taken by the government to improve business climate.
"This exercise has helped us a lot. This time we focused mainly on taking feedback from stakeholders. All nodal ministries were taking feedback," Abhishek told PTI.

He further said the World Bank report has acknowledged that GST (Goods and Services Tax) is a substantial reform and "hopefully it will have a positive impact on the country's ranking next year," he added.
The secretary said the department was continuously communicating with industry and informing them about the reform measures.

On achieving the target of bringing the country's rank in top 50, Abhishek said that more steps are in the pipeline, which would further help in improving India's ranking.
He said that as many as 120 steps taken by the government are yet to be recognised by the World Bank.

Besides, he added, the department has suggested 90 more reform measures such as with regard to commercial courts.
"Once these reforms are operationalise, definitely we will have significant improvement in the ranking," he added.
"We will work on recognition of the 122 reforms which were not recognised this year by the World Bank... For this purpose, we will work with the ministries, the two states (Delhi and Maharashtra) as well as stakeholders and with the World Bank team," he added.
In its report, the bank has recognised this year as one of the world's top 10 improvers.
The Doing Business Report of the World Bank ranks a country on 10 parameters that assess areas such as starting a business, construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and trade across borders.

In paying taxes and resolving insolvency, India's rank has improved from 172 to 119 and 136 to 103, respectively. Similarly, in getting credit, it has improved from 44 to 29.