Ease of doing business: Punjab ranked 19th, industry expected it to fare better

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 5

Blame it on the lax implementation of reforms or poor feedback, there has not been much improvement in Punjab’s ranking in the ease of doing annual business ranking of states and Union Territories released by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade. 

The state was eyeing to be among the top 10 states. “We have implemented almost all reforms and expected that we would be among the top 10 states. However, the result came as a shocker to us. Once the details are out, we will analyse the shortcomings and act accordingly,” said Sibin C, Director, Industries, and Commerce, Punjab. The ranking of states based on the implementation of the Business Reform Action Plan was started in 2015. To date, state rankings have been released for 2015, 2016 and 2017-18. The Business Reform Action Plan 2018-19 includes 180 reform points covering 12 business regulatory areas such as access to information, single-window system, labour, environment, etc.

However, the most prominent areas were access to information and transparency enablers, labour regulation-enablers and construction permit enablers.

The final ranking is based on two separate scoring systems, with a majority of the assessment conducted on the basis of states providing evidence of reforms in policies and procedures. According to sources, Punjab didn’t score well on the feedback part, which led to a decline in the overall ranking.

In the rankings released by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the single-biggest jump in ‘State Business Reform Assessment 2018-19’ was witnessed by Lakshadweep, which came up by 19 places to the 15th position. Industrially advanced states such as Gujarat and Maharashtra slipped further to the 10th, 13th positions, respectively. The government said the trend was anticipated.