Karnataka, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh And Tamil Nadu Among Seven 'Top Achievers' In 'Ease Of Doing Business' Ranking

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday (30 June) announced the assessment of States and UTs under Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP) 2020, the fifth edition of the BRAP exercise in New Delhi.

Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are the top achievers based on implementation of Business Reforms Action Plan, an official release said on Thursday (30 June).

Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh figure under the Achievers category.

While Assam, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Jharkhand, Kerala, Rajasthan and West Bengal have been placed in the Aspirers category, Andaman and Nicobar, Bihar, Chandigarh, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Puducherry and Tripura have been clubbed under the Emerging Business Ecosystems category.

The announcements were made in the presence of Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, DPIIT secretary Anurag Jain, and senior government officials of state and UT administration.

The BRAP 2020 includes 301 reform points covering 15 business regulatory areas such as Access to Information, Single Window System, Labour, Environment, Land Administration and Transfer of Land and Property, Utility Permits and others.

As many as 118 new reforms were included to further augment the reform process. Sectoral reforms with 72 action points spread across 9 sectors namely Trade License, Healthcare, Legal Metrology, Cinema Halls, Hospitality, Fire NOC, Telecom, Movie Shooting and Tourism were introduced for the first time to expand the scope of reform agenda, the Commerce Ministry said in a release on Thursday (30 June).

According to the ministry, the broader aim of the programme is to boost investor confidence, foster business friendly climate and augment Ease of Doing Business across the country by introducing an element of healthy competition through a system of assessing states based on their performance in the implementation of Business Reforms Action Plan.

In a departure from the previous years, where States/UTs were ranked, this year they have been placed under the four categories including Top Achievers, Achievers, Aspirers and Emerging Business Ecosystems.

The objective of assessing the States/UTs is not to create a hierarchy among them but to rather create an enabling framework wherein learnings can be shared amongst States/UTs which in turn will lead to a nationwide spill over of good practices, the ministry said.

The assessment gives full weightage to the feedback obtained from actual users or respondents at the ground level, who provided their feedback about the effective implementation of reforms.

DPIIT since 2014 has been assessing States/UTs based on their performance in implementation of prescribed reforms in Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP) exercise. Till date, assessment of States/UTs have been released for the years 2015, 2016, 2017-18 and 2019.

Speaking after release of assessment report, Sitharaman said that the nature of reforms had undergone change since 1991.

“The reforms now taking place are responsive reforms. Unlike the reforms of 1991, which were given to us for implementation, there is no compulsion now. The objective is to see what will bring out improvement in systems and ensure better lives for us. An element of nudge has been brought into every layer of the government. Nudging can not be by the government only and the industry has a big role to play there,’, the Finance Minister said.

The Finance Minister appreciated the changes brought in the assessment framework of implementation under the Business Reforms Action Plan over years.

Speaking at the event, Commerce Minister Goyal said that the assessment has evolved from evidence-based to 100 per cent feedback in multilingual format.

He said that the purpose of this BRAP exercise is to infuse a culture of learning from each other’s best practices and improve upon the business climate in each state/UT with a unified objective for India to emerge as a most favoured Investment Destination across the globe

“When Hon’ble Prime Minister gave the thrust in 2014 to improving the ease of doing business, one of his major thrust areas was that while we are working at the international level for improving our ranking, we must involve all the stakeholders including the States and UTs in our effort to get them on board so that people really feel the difference and change in their ecosystem, which will lead to ease of living,” Goyal said.

“The process started in 2014 has started bearing fruit as we go along. Rather than ease of doing business being limited to a few areas, few cities and few businesses, we are seeing it being reflected across the country through the spirit of competitive federalism and also of collaboration”, the Commerce minister added.