TS, AP among 7 \'Top Achievers\' in EoDB rankings

Hyderabad: Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were among the seven states in the country categorised as ‘Top Achievers’ in implementation of Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP) 2020, according to a report released by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday.

The Centre this year classified states into four categories: Top Achievers, Achievers, Aspirers, and Emerging Business Ecosystems, in contrast to previous years when States/UTs were ranked according to their Ease of Doing Business (EoDB).

In the ‘Top Achievers’ category, Gujarat was one of the other six states, including Haryana, Karnataka, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. Six States including Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh figured in the Achievers category.

The "Aspirers" category includes Assam, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Jharkhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, and West Bengal, while the "Emerging Business Ecosystems" category includes Andaman & Nicobar, Bihar, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Puducherry, and Tripura.

The Centre maintained that the objective of assessing the States/UTs was not to create a hierarchy among States/UTs but rather to develop a framework that allows States/UTs to share their leanings, which would then encourage the adoption of best practices across the country. The broader aim was to boost investor confidence, foster business friendly climate and augment Ease of Doing Business across the country by introducing an element of healthy competition through a system of assessing states based on their performance in the implementation of Business Reforms Action Plan.

The BRAP 2020 included 301 reform points covering 15 business regulatory areas such as Access to Information, Single Window System, Labour, Environment, Land Administration & Transfer of Land and Property, Utility Permits and others. Around 118 new reforms were included to further augment the reform process. Sectoral reforms with 72 action points spread across nine sectors namely Trade License, Healthcare, Legal Metrology, Cinema Halls, Hospitality, Fire NOC, Telecom, Movie Shooting and Tourism were introduced for the first time to expand the scope of the reform agenda.

Nirmala Sitharaman claimed that after 1991, the fundamental nature of reforms had changed. "The reforms now in place are responsive ones. In contrast to the 1991 reforms, which were forced upon us, there is no compulsion now. An element of nudge has been brought into every layer of the government. Nudging cannot be done by the government alone and the industry has a big role to play,” she said

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said the assessment has evolved from evidence-based to 100% feedback in multilingual format. He said that the purpose of the BRAP exercise was to infuse a culture of learning from each other’s best practices and improve upon the business climate in each State/UT with a unified objective for India to emerge as the most favoured investment destination.