Ease of doing business: U.T., states’ ranking to be released on Jun 30

The government will release the ranking of states and Union Territories (UTs) in terms of ease of doing business on June 30, the commerce and industry ministry said on Wednesday.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will release the assessment report of states/UTs under Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP), 2020 in the presence of Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday, it said.

The exercise is aimed at triggering competition among states to improve the business climate to attract domestic and global investors.

BRAP 2020 includes 301 reform points that cover 15 business regulatory areas such as access to information, single window system, labour, environment, sectoral reforms and other reforms spanning across the lifecycle of a business.

Sectoral reforms have been introduced this time wherein 72 reforms were identified across nine sectors – trade license, healthcare, legal metrology, cinema halls, hospitality, fire NOC (no objection certificate), telecom, movie shooting and tourism.

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), since 2014, has been releasing BRAP for steering business reforms to create an investor-friendly ecosystem across the country.

Till date, state rankings have been released for 2015, 2016, 2017-18 and 2019.

“DPIIT has undertaken a feedback-based exercise wherein feedback was taken from businesses on the quality of implementation of the reforms carried out by the states and UTs. The assessment is based on the feedback obtained from the actual users of respective states/UTs,” it added.

In the last ranking released in September 2020, Andhra Pradesh topped the chart, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.