- Sunday, January 12, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
SEVEN Indian states, including Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Telangana – have scored more than 90 per cent in the Narendra Modi government’s ranking of states on ease of doing business.
The Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP) 2020, which was released by Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday (30), showed that the said states were in leading position when it came to completing a long list of reforms that the central government identified for bettering confidence of investors and access to government services for citizens.
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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government started the process of ranking states in 2015, based on the implementation of BRAP, which stresses on progress made in terms of digitization, transparency and investors’ confidence.
Unlike in the earlier years, the Indian government has stopped the system of a simple ranking and encouraged ranking of a band of states in the same range of reform completion, Moneycontrol reported. In the previous edition of the ranking exercise which is done every year, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana were ranked in the top three positions.
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The second list comprised states with 80-90 per cent score and they are Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. States such as Assam, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, West Bengal and Rajasthan came in the third list with a score range of 50-80 per cent.
Among those regions that scored less than 50 per cent are Delhi, Bihar and all the union territories.
“The rankings have evolved significantly. From an original assessment of what action each state had taken, to a mix of actions taken, and feedback received by stakeholders, to now a 100% fully feedback-based assessment system,” Indian commerce and industries minister Piyush Goyal said.
BRAP 2020 consists a list of 301 reform action points over several parameters and at least 18 state government departments, Moneycontrol added.
“Every year, a list of increasingly sophisticated reforms are planned and most states have shown great consistency in completing them. The government feels that a relook at the exercise may provide a more significant improvement in creating ease of doing business,” an official of the department for promotion of industry and internal trade, which is under the Indian commerce and industry ministry, said.
The latest BRAP report also saw the Modi government giving special focus on reforms around the PM Gatishakti plan, the report added.
