“There’s a great unease to doing business in India. Companies face so much red tape they’re uncompetitive from the start,” claims a Bloomberg Opinion piece.
As per the report, “a little over three years ago, the World Bank scrapped its annual ‘Doing Business’ report amid allegations that its top management had applied pressure on staff to boost China’s score. Back then, India’s rank was 63. That was a big jump from 2014, when it languished at a lowly 134th position among 189 economies. Still, starting a business continues to be a nightmare. The internet is strewn with first-person accounts — like this one — of the fruitless running around for mindless permits and approvals overwhelming even the most intrepid of entrepreneurs.”
It further states, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign has also got lost somewhere in the labyrinths of this bureaucratic maze. Despite the decade-old program, which claims to be the “single largest manufacturing initiative undertaken by a nation in recent history,” the share of manufacturing in the economy has shrunk to its lowest since 1960. A great unease of doing business is a big drag on India’s competitiveness.”
In a social media post on X, the author has also shared a chart comparing the cost of setting up a small factory in Maharashtra with that of setting up one near Bangkok. For instance, a piece of land which costs $777,000 in Thailand, would cost $971,200 in India. The cost of registration will be $15,500 in Thailand, while it would be $58,300 in India.
Industry experts, however, say the cost of establishing and running a factory, including land and building costs and obtaining permissions, is not the only consideration for manufacturers.
“There are also the cost of labour, the availability of relevant skills through appropriate local technological institutes, the customer base for the product being manufactured, and local and Central government incentives and tax breaks offered to manufacturers. Given the incumbent government’s Make in India programme and all the associated schemes and benefits which attract various global manufacturers to India, making an apples-to-apples comparison is not as straightforward as it may seem,” says Santhosh Kumar, Vice Chairman, ANAROCK Group.
According to property consultants, India’s infrastructure development story is closely tied to its economic growth,
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