India places 77th in World Bank Doing Business Rankings

India jumps 23 places to 77th globally in World Bank Doing Business Rankings

The World Bank has just released its annual Ease of Doing Business rakings for 2019 showing India to have jumped 23 places on last year to climb from 100th in the world to 77th currently.

This represents an unrivalled improvement of 55 places in the last two years.

In good news for UK businesses, one of the largest improvements made in the ranking’s ten indicators was in ‘trading across borders’ jumping from 146th position last year to 80th this year.

Several initiatives were key to this achieving this centred around reducing the time and cost to export and import. These include measures to electronically seal containers, upgrade port infrastructure, and allow electronic submission of supporting documents with digital signatures.

This is very promising. As previous UKIBC research has shown, establishing a successful import-export relationship with UK firms opens the door to investment down the line.

The UKIBC looks forward to publishing our own ‘Ease of Doing Business’ report next week where we explore these barriers, opportunities, and more from a UK business perspective operating in India.

This research – based on extensive survey research with companies reporting a combined turnover of over USD 122 billion – will be our forth annual report, and the last before India’s General Election in 2019.

As such not only will we assess the progress made on Modi’s promise in 2014 to give investors ‘a red carpet, not red tape’, but evaluate the landscape of UK-India trade relations before we enter a post-election, post-Brexit world.

You can find last years UKIBC ‘Ease of Doing Business’ report here.