Andhra, Telangana and Gujarat top ease of doing business, says NITI CEO Amitabh Kant

Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Gujarat are the three best-performing states in "ease of doing business", NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Monday.

On the other hand, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam fare worst in the rankings, he told reporters in New Delhi.

Kant presented the rankings based on key development and social indicators across states and union territories during a national conference of Chief Secretaries.

Similarly, based on availability of electricity in rural households, he said, the best-performing states are Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Kerala, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, which have achieved 100% penetration. 

"The bottom three are Bihar with 46%, Nagaland with 45% and Jharkhand with 40%," he said.

In nutrition, Kerala, Goa and Tripura are the best-performing states while Meghalaya, Jharkhand and Bihar are the worst, Kant said.

Tamil Nadu, Mizoram and Kerala come out on top in terms of reading comprehension while Uttarakhand, Chattisgarh and Bihar are at the bottom.

"My intention was to tell all the states where they stand in comparison to each other in the fields of electricity, connectivity, infrastructure, health, education and so on, so they could improve," he said.

In October last year, it was announced that the bifurcated states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were the new joint top-ranked states of 2016, in ease of doing business.

The Assessment of State Implementation of Business Reforms, 2016, based on the ranking by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, tracks the level of implementation of norms by state governments making it easier to do business in.

Telangana and Andhra ended the closely-contested contest with a score of 98.78 per cent on the 340 parameters that states were ranked on.


IANS inputs