Government rebuts World Bank's report which places India at 134th place on ease of doing business.

NEW DELHI: India may be readying to pick holes in the World Bank's 'Doing Business' report, citing anomalies and amplification of cost as part of the reasons for the country's 134th ranking even as the new central government has started taking measures to make it easier to do business.

According to the report, nine mandatory documents are needed for exports from India. However, officials said, only five of these are mandatory. Similarly, in case of imports, only seven documents are mandatory instead of 11 listed in the report.

"We carried out a review. Mandatory documents are only five for exports and seven for imports against a figure of nine and 11 in the World Bank report. This correction can easily take India's ranking up by 30 places," said a government official, who did not wish to be identified. India slipped three positions in 2013, compared to the previous year's rankings. The department of industrial policy & promotion ( DIPP) under the commerce ministry has taken a series of steps to improve ease of doing business that include having a timeframe for clearance of applications and delicensing manufacturing of several defence products.

The World Bank report has listed inspection document, technical standard certificate, certificate of origin and terminal handling receipts under the requirement of export documents for India.

"These are not at all mandatory. These are to be attached only if the importing country insists," said the official. In case of imports, the four documents that are not mandatory include certificate of origin, certified engineer's report, inspection report and product manual.

Interestingly, the report lists certificate of origin as mandatory document for export only for India and not for any other major economy, including China, Brazil and Sri Lanka.

Similarly, among import documents, product manual has been listed as compulsory only for India, among the major economies. "We are taking this up with the World Bank. There seems a case of clear discrimination, where the documents insisted by the OECD countries for imports are also being counted as mandatory documents for India's exports," said another official.

A committee has been formed,under Director General of Foreign Trade Pravir Kumar, to reduce the mandatory documentation for cross-border transactions as part of efforts to further reduce transaction costs and make it easier to do business in the country.

Meanwhile, the commerce department is carrying out an internal survey to estimate the transaction cost and time that it claims have been exaggerated in the report.

According to the report, average cost of export from India is $1,170 (about Rs 70,000), nearly double that of Sri Lanka, UAE, China. "We want to know the basis for that. To counter it, we are collecting our own data based on survey of 300-500 exporters and importers to estimate the time and duration of a transaction. It will be based on the same pro forma as used by the World Bank," said the official.

The actual cost of exports should be $600-700 instead of $1,170 suggested by the World Bank, said Ajay Sahai, director general and CEO of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations.

"There is a lot of discrepancy in the documents they have listed and also the cost. They may have picked up some consignments where these documents were required. An analysis is being done. We are also seeking numbers from our members," said Sahai.

In the past, China has also complained about the World Bank's report, saying that it was heavily biased in favour of developed countries and wanted an outright ban of the report.

Department of industrial policy & promotion secretary Amitabh Kant had recently said the World Bank study on ease of doing business was flawed as it is conducted only in Mumbai city, where "there is no manufacturing and industrialisation".

Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com