Of the 29 states and 7 union territories, West Bengal has bagged the top spot in the domestic Ease of Doing Business — an index created by the central government in collaboration with the World Bank. According to the real-time score on the 340-Point Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP), West Bengal has left all the states behind with a 99.73% score, followed by Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh tied at 99.46%.
Since the index is being updated on a real-time basis and so the ranking changes more frequently than expected. It is noteworthy that Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, both, had also bagged the top position in the past. States that have made to the top 10 of the list are Haryana with 99.46%, Rajasthan with 99.19%, Gujarat with 99.19%, Andhra Pradesh with 98.92%, Jharkhand with 98.92%, Telangana with 98.37%, and Karnataka with 98.37%.
While the idea behind creating this index was to create healthy competition between states to improve ease of doing business, a recent report of Finance Express showed that as many as 18 states have submitted documents to claim a perfect score. Since the beginning of the index in 2015, no state has ever scored a perfect 100% score.
The states that have claimed a perfect score are West Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat and Haryana. It is interesting to note that Mumbai (Maharastra) and New Delhi, the two cities that actually count for World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business have not made to the top 10. Maharashtra is at 13th rank with 97.29%, while Delhi at 34.17%. What’s surprising is that after 18th rank of Bihar with 88.02% the score drops drastically to 60.94%.
