India aims to be among top 30 in 'ease of doing biz': Amitabh Kant

New Delhi: The government is focussed onimproving infrastructure and driving innovation to ensure that India ranks among the top 30 countries in terms of 'ease of

doing business' in the next 3-4 years, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Tuesday.

Speaking at an IAMAI event here, Kant said the ecosystem of innovation is just ‘beginning to blossom’ and one is seeing a resurgence of young Indians starting new businesses.

"Our objective is that India must become a very easy and a very simple place to do business in. This is one government that is focussed on innovation and trying to make India an easy simple place to do business," he added.

Stating that India has jumped up 12 positions in the ease of doing business, Kant said the government has taken various steps in this regard including bringing in the bankruptcy law, e-biz platform for a single channel of approvals and is also introducing a national company law tribunal.

According to the World Bank's Doing Business Report 2016, India ranks 130 out of 189 countries in the ease of doing business. "...our objective is that in the next 3-4 years, India must come in the top 30 countries as far as ease of doing business is concerned," he added.

Kant added that the government is strongly focussed on enhancing the infrastructure sector and improving connectivity. He also released a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) that highlights the opportunities for India to become a leading player in the global data centre market.

"Decision to set up data centre in the country cannot be mandatory and it will not be conducive for the ecosystem. For a conducive policy and regulation on data centres, we have to work in partnership with the industry and bodies like IAMAI," he said.

He added that a dialogue will be initiated with departments like IT, telecom and energy to create the best possible infrastructure for data centres. According to the report, India's data centre infrastructure market is pegged to be around USD 7 billion by 2020 from about USD 2.2 billion currently.

This would make India the second largest market for data centre infrastructure within the Asia/Pacific region by 2020. "India has the potential to capture a big share in the global data centre market.

However, there is a need to address some of the risks and barriers and create the right incentives for businesses to build effective data centre infrastructure in the country," IAMAI President Subho Ray said.

The report calls for the government to facilitate data centre operations in India through clear policies to facilitate trans-border flow of data and tax sops and incentives to woo foreign players.

It also warns against the dangers of "forced localisation of data" adding that the same would reduce competitiveness; harm India's GDP and fledgling reputation as an emerging data centre hub.