The World Bank has agreed to widen the scope of the ease of doing business rankings for India by expanding it to eight more cities. Disclosing this, Nirmala Sitharaman, minister of state (independent charge) for commerce and industry, said the move would improve the quality of the index as the survey will cover 10 cities. At present it is restricted to two cities— New Delhi and Mumbai. India has been very keen to improve its position in the ease of doing business rankings conducted by the World Bank. At present, India is ranked 130 and is seeking to improve this to 90.
Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of Indian Industry, a business lobby, welcomed the move. “The index will now be more representative of the country.” Sitharaman argued that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is pushing for economic reforms, citing the passage of the last batch of legislations on the goods and services tax (GST) in the just concluded session of Parliament as an example.