The Bretton Woods Institutions meet in Singapore for their annual meeting in seeking to reinvent their relevance. Unfortunately, excessive pre-occupation with reassigning quotas detracts attention from a failure to redress the growing global structural imbalances creating uncertainty on the prospects of a soft landing.

Just prior to their meeting the World Bank released a report entitled “Doing Business 2007— How to Reform”, which compares regulations in 175 countries. This is the fourth in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those which constrain them.

Notwithstanding our improved economic performance, we do not rank among the top reformers in 2005-06. In fact our position in the table of rankings on ‘the ease of doing business” only marginally improves from 138 in 2006 to 134 in 2007.

The methodology of assessment is based on ten evaluation parameters. On starting a business in terms of number of procedures, cost and time, we rank 88th. On the criteria of licensing requirements, particularly in the construction sector, we rank 155th, with 20 procedures to be followed and a time cost of 270 days! On the index of employing workers and the rigidity of working hours, we rank 112th. Not surprisingly, on the index of firing workers we rank 170th, and the cost of severance stands at 56 weeks salary.

On registration of property, we rank low at 110th, with a time of 62 days and a cost of 7.8 per cent of the property value and involving six procedures. On securing credits, we rank 65th, significantly better than other criteria and similarly on protection of investors at 33rd. On paying taxes we rank 158th despite extensive tax reforms undertaken by us. On trading across borders we rank 139th, with the cost of imports at $ 1,244 per container, while cost of exports is $ 864 per container and time taken to export is 27 days. On enforcement of contracts, we are a poor 173rd, with 56 procedures and 1,420 days. On business exit we rank 133rd, taking upto 10 years and paying recovery rate at 13 cents per dollar.

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