Why India lags behind China in the ease of doing business rankings 2019?

India has made an astonishing performance in the ease of doing business rankings 2019 by jumping 23 places India stood at 77th rank in the World Bank’s global Ease of Doing Business rankings.

Indian performance:

• India’s position has improved in six out of the 10 indicators and has moved closer to international best practices on seven out of 10 indicators.
• India is now the best place to do business in South Asia.
• India has fared badly on the fronts of enforcing contracts and Registering property.

China in the rankings:

• India is still miles behind when its performance is compared with China which is the other fastest growing economy.
• China made a huge jump from 78th to 46th place.
• The areas China has outshone India are registering property and enforcing contracts.
• China introduced an advanced system of land registration by mapping out the whole country.
• India’s poor performance under the indices of enforcing contracts makes doing business in India challenging.
• China’s rapid reforms take it to the closer proximity of the advanced economies in global ease of doing business rankings.
• China has leapfrogged EU countries like Italy, Romania and Greece and Latin American OECD members like Chile and Mexico.

China is the elephant in the room. Even though India has made a good progress it cannot be complacent and self-congratulatory about it because India’s main competitor China is making much better progress.