Hyderabad: Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh, which had filed complaints against each other with the Centre on theft of electronic data, have topped the rankings in Ease of Doing Business in the country.
The preliminary EoDB rankings were released by the Union commerce ministry’s Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. While TS ranked first with a score of 60.24 per cent, AP stood second with 55.75 per cent.
Experts from the World Bank and the global consultancy firm KPMG will visit the states to verify whether the information uploaded by the states on implementing business-friendly reforms were true or not before giving final rankings in September. However, official sources said that the final rankings would be more or less the same.
Final ranks after field verification
Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh have topped the rankings in Ease of Doing Business in the country. Now, even if there are any changes at the last minute, it would be minor and both the states are bound to figure in the top five.
In the final rankings for 2015 released in September last year, AP was placed second and TS at 13th position. Howe-ver, the preliminary rankings for 2016 released in June, came as a shocker for AP as its rank fell to 19th rank while TS jumped to second rank. However, within a month, AP climbed to third rank from 19th, while TS remained at the same 2nd rank.
This led to an ugly fight between both the Telugu-speaking states, with TS complaining to the Centre early this month alleging that AP had stolen the TS data uploaded on Ease of Doing Business website and uploaded the same to get better ranking.
Industries minister K.T. Rama Rao had also written to Union commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman complaining about AP copying TS data and seeking stringent action against AP.
However, the Centre gave indications to the TS government that there would be no action against the AP government on the ground that uplo-ading or copying of data alone would not fetch good rank.
This is because the final rankings will be given based on thorough field-level verification by experts from World Bank and KPMG, to ascertain whether the data uploaded by states on reforms were actually being implemented or not.
