Ease of Doing Business: Punjab climbs one rank:-

Punjab moved up a notch and was placed 19th in ease of doing business as per the Business Reform Action Plan 2019 rankings report released by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

The state fared worse than neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, which jumped 7th rank from 16th last year, and Haryana, which was ranked 16th after slipping from 3rd rank it held earlier.

In the region, Rajasthan which was at number nine last year, improved ranking by a notch and was placed at number 8. Jammu and Kashmir improved from its rank number 22 last year to 21 this year. Chandigarh remained at number 29 as it was last year.

In 2015-16, Punjab was ranked at number 16 with an implementation score of 36.73 percent against the national average of 32 percent on 285 Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP) points. In 2016-17, State’s rank in ease of doing business improved to number 12 among the States and UTs when the State achieved implementation score of 91.07 percent against the national average of 48.9 percent on 340 BRAP points. The rank of Punjab came down in subsequent year 2017-18 to number 20 as it registered an implementation score of 53.92 percent as compared to national average of 60.2 percent on 372 BRAP points.

The rankings are based on 12 reform areas, feedback from users, fulfilling 80 comprehensive recommendations and 143 out of 187 score points adjudged on a score from 1 to 5. The exercise covered 17 departments.

Punjab achieved 100 per cent compliance in all the 12 business regulatory areas namely access to information and transparency, construction permit, contract enforcement, environmental registration, inspection, labour regulation, land administration and transfer of land and property, land availability and allotment, obtaining utility permits, paying taxes, sector specific and single window system, where compliance lacked in varied proportions ranging from zero percent to 93 percent in last assessment.

Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs launched the fourth edition of Business Reforms Action Plan ranking of states.

Key Highlights of the ranking
The rankings are being launched since 2015. The Business Reform Action Plan 2018-19 includes 180 reform points that covers business regulatory areas such as Single Window System, Access to Information, Labour, Environment, etc.

This time the ranking gives full weightage to feedback to over 30,000 respondents.

The top ten ranks under the State Reform Action, 2019 are as follows

Rank 1: Andhra Pradesh
Rank 2: Uttar Pradesh
Rank 3: Telangana
Rank 4: Jharkhand
Rank 5: Madhya Pradesh
Rank 6: Chhattisgarh
Rank 7: Himachal Pradesh
Rank 8: Rajasthan
Rank 9: West Bengal
Rank 10: Gujarat
What is Business Reforms Action Plan?
The plan was released by DPIIT-World Bank. It comprises of 80 reforms (187 reform action points) to be implemented by 19 state departments. Among them, Andhra Pradesh achieved 100% compliance to 187 reform action points.