India Will Be Among Top 100 in Ease of Doing Business: Sinha

NEW DELHI: India will be among top 100 countries in the World Bank's list of ease of doing business ranking next year, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said

"We are very hopeful that next year when ease of doing business ranking comes we will have moved from 130 to being in top 100," Sinha said at the Karur Vysya Bank - Dun & Bradstreet SME Business Excellence Awards 2015 function here.

"We have moved up 12 ranks in the ease of doing business... This ranking was based on may 2015 and many of the important initiatives that we have taken are only now starting to bear fruits.

The World Bank in a report released last month ranked India 130 out of 189 countries in the ease of doing business, moving up 12 places from last year.

Speaking to reporters here earlier in the day, Sinha said a high-powered committee to suggest a revenue-neutral rate for the proposed goods and services tax (GST) will submit its report in the first week of December.

"We just had a consultation with the chief economic advisor and his committee that has been studying the question of revenue neutral rate. They have pulled together a lot of data from many different sources," he said.

"We have finalised the parameters that will be necessary to establish the rates. That is now being looked at. We will have something by the first week of December."

Sinha also said the government was in continuous talks with the opposition parties on the proposed GST Bill.

The constitution amendment bill for GST has been passed by Lok Sabha, and is pending in Rajya Sabha where the ruling NDA does not have majority.

"We are trying to talk with them (opposition) about all the aspects of GST. We all recognise how important this is for the economy for all of India so we are in continuous discussion to see what we can do to get it passed in the winter session," he said.

The minister said the actual rate of GST is to be set not by a constitution amendment but by the GST bill.

"Of course we have had some input that there should be a rate that is fixed by the constitution amendment itself. So that is an item under discussion but as of now our view is that that should be in the GST bill and not in constitutional amendment," he said.

The Rajya Sabha Select Committee has suggested that the GST rate should not go beyond 20 percent as higher rates could fuel inflationary tendencies.

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