A day after the World Bank announced its decision to discontinue the next ‘Doing Business’ ranking report, a senior government official on Friday said the move will not have any impact on the investment climate in India. India’s ongoing reforms to improve business climate will continue, he said.

       Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Secretary Giridhar Aramane said the attractiveness of a country is generally defined by investments into the country. In the case of India, foreign direct investment (FDI) has been growing over the last two years.

       “To the extent of the (impact on) Indian economy and industry, I virtually see no impact. On Independence day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about reduction in compliance burden. Some 15,000 unnecessary compliances have been reduced by rationalising, eliminating, and automating processes. To ensure ease of living for citizens and ease of doing business, we will pursue our own programme, irrespective of whether the World Bank is rating us or not,” Aramane told Business Standard.

       The World Bank took the decision after a probe found irregularities in data, allegedly done by staff members who were under pressure from top bank officials to improve China’s ranking.

       A government source told news agency PTI that discontinuation of publication of the ranking report has exposed China’s fraud and would lead to shifting of manufacturing bases to India.

       “Fraud by China will boost multilateral initiatives like the supply chain resilience initiative to move manufacturing to India,” the official told PTI.

       An official statement from the World Bank Group said on Thursday: “After？data irregularities on Doing Business 2018 and 2020 were reported？internally in June 2020, World Bank management？paused？the next Doing Business report and initiated？aseries of？reviews？and-audits？of the report and its methodology. In addition, bec-ause the internal reports raised ethical matters, including the conduct of former Board offici-als as well as current and/or former Bank staff, management reported the allegations to the Bank’s appropriate internal accountability mechanisms.”

       India had leapfrogged to the 63rd rank in the ease of doing business rankings released in October 2019, jumping 14 notches from the year-ago period.