From CK Nayak
New Delhi: Meghalaya which was adjudged as the fastest-growing state in the whole country has been found to be a ‘very poor performer’ of economic reforms by none other than the World Bank!
Meghalaya is one of the poorest performers of economic reforms in India and stands just ahead of Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh in the region, the World Bank report ‘Assessment of state implementation of business reforms in India’ says while evaluating the states’ performance of economic reforms.
In the report compiled in September 2015, the World Bank Group ranked states and Union territories while evaluating their performance of economic reforms. The bank ranked the states based on the 98-point action plan (ease of doing business) for business reforms to all states and Union territories in India.
The World Bank Group conducted the assessment of Indian states business reforms after Prime Minister
Narendra Modi had requested it to support India’s efforts to enhance its competitiveness and increase manufactured exports.
The implementation status of each state has been converted to a percentage, and based on this the state rankings have been calculated.
While based on the point act plan for business reforms, J&K has got 5.93% ahead of three states -Meghalaya 4.38%, Nagaland 3.41% and Arunachal Pradesh 1.23%.
Gujarat has topped the list with 71.14 % following by Andhra Pradesh (70.12%), Jharkhand (63.09%), Chhattisgarh (62.45%), Madhya Pradesh (62%) and Rajasthan (61%). While capital New Delhi has stood at 15th position with 37.35 per cent, Haryana and Punjab have been ranked 14th and 16th positions with percentage of 40.66 and 36.73 respectively.
The report says that the objective of the action plan was to lay out the first of a series of recommendations targeted at increasing transparency and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of various government regulatory functions and services for business in India.
It says the World Bank Group stands committed to support Indian states in their efforts to further improve the regulatory framework for business, and to help build bridges between states and the Centre to share knowledge, best practices and promote both competitive and cooperative federalism going forward.
The report says that while efforts at improving India’s ranking in the doing business report do cover some of the regulatory issues pertaining to state governments but emphasis much more is required to be done at state governments’ level to achieve the Prime Minister’s vision of making India an easy place to do business.
Only the previous year (2014-15) Meghalaya despite many constraints had emerged as the fastest-growing state in the whole country with a growth rate of 9.7% in 2013-14, several notches ahead of the national growth rate.
This was revealed by IndiaSpend, the country’s first data journalism initiative and a project of Spending & Policy Research Foundation based at Mumbai Again In October last year, Meghalaya with a double digit compound average annual growth of 10.8 per cent and Rs 27,300 crore worth GSDP, had emerged as one of the most competitive states in the country among North East states as per a study by Harvard Professor Michael Porter’s Institute of Competitiveness founded by Michael Porter and based at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts.