World Bank's business-readiness surveys to kick off late-September

The finance ministry's department of financial services (DFS) and the commerce ministry's department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) will be coordinating and supervising the Indian surveys for the Washington-headquartered bank.

The process of gathering the Indian data is slated to begin by September-end, two people aware of the matter said.

The DPIIT, which is the nodal agency for India, has appointed KPMG as a consultant for handling the project, which will benchmark the business environment and investment climate in most economies, the people mentioned above said seeking anonymity.

This is the first time a consultancy has been hired for the job.

Quantitative assessment

The new Business Ready Report will provide a quantitative assessment of the business environment for private sector development.

The World Bank discontinued the previous rankings in 2021 following a probe into alleged data irregularities and ethical concerns.

At the time, India ranked 63 out of 190 economies (in the 2020 Doing Business Report). Although not a particularly impressive ranking, it marked a significant improvement over its 2014 ranking of 142.

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"The survey will primarily be conducted by the World Bank for the new index and will be coordinated through DPIIT. For the financial sector, the DFS will be coordinating and supervising the survey," the first person mentioned above said.

"The World Bank will conduct the survey starting late September 2024 while the India business environment report will be published in 2025-2026," the person added.

Press Trust of India had in May reported the B-Ready report will assess the efficiency with which regulatory framework and public services are combined in practice.

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It said the World Bank will focus on 10 topics covering the lifecycle of a firm in the course of starting, operating, closing or reorganizing its activities.

These topics are: business entry, location, utility services, labour, financial services, international trade, taxation, dispute resolution, market competition and business insolvency.

Mixed experiences with international rating

Experts said India has had mixed experiences with international rating agencies and rankings, across both economic and developmental indicators.

"However, any country or government needs to assess themselves, and find the gaps, what is needed to be achieved, and to what extent the achievements are being made, etc. These kinds of assessments are important and will help the government understand the changes," said N.R. Bhanumurthy, Director at the Madras School of Economics.

"I certainly think we have seen improvement across various indicators in the last three to four years."

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Spokespersons of World Bank (India), Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Finance, KPMG, and DPIIT secretary Amardeep Singh Bhatia didn't respond to emailed queries.

According to minutes from an October 2023 conference published by the watchdog Bretton Woods Project, economist Norman Loayza, the Director of the Global Indicators Group at the World Bank noted that while the Doing Business report focused on the ease of business from the viewpoint of firms and entrepreneurs, the B-Ready index takes a broader approach and assesses the private sector as a whole, factoring in the benefits to other stakeholders, including workers and the environment.

After data irregularities on Doing Business 2018 and 2020 were reported internally in June 2020, the World Bank management paused the next Doing Business report and initiated a series of reviews and audits of the report and its methodology.

With internal reports raising ethical matters, including the conduct of former Board officials and current and former Bank staff, the management reported the allegations to the Bank’s internal accountability mechanisms.