New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh has topped a list of states in the new Ease of Doing Business rankings, released by the government today. Andhra Pradesh’s neighbour Telangana, also the country’s newest state, has been ranked number two in the list.

Haryana and Jharkhand have moved up three slots each, to be ranked third and fourth in the state rankings. Gujarat has slid two slots to the fifth position. The other states that make up the top nine, described as the top achievers, are Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan.

States have been ranked on how well they have implemented 405 business reforms initiatives identified by the centre and the feedback from businesses.

“This time we have taken feedback from industry to see whether the reforms are percolated to the ground level,” Ramesh Abhishek, secretary of the department of industrial policy and promotion said.
Next year, he said, states would only be evaluated based on feedback from the industry.

“A large number of states have made significant progress in reforms suggested in BRAP 2017,” the government said.

Delhi wasn’t one of them.

It has slipped four slots from the 19 to 23 rank, with 32 per cent marks.

Uttar Pradesh (93 per cent), Bihar (82 per cent) and militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir (33 per cent) had scored better than Delhi with 32 per cent marks.

The national capital scored 121 hits on the reform scorecard and was slipped up on 235 initiatives. The city government had reported 34 per cent compliance of the reforms. But the surveyed businesses said the city government, which has been engaged in a tug-of-war with the Lieutenant Governor for three years, had done much less.

17 states have achieved a reform evidence score of more than 90 per cent and 15 have achieved a combined score of 90 per cent and more.

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

DeshGujarat