India's business entry density, indicator of entrepreneurial dynamism, is one of the poorest: World Bank report

A just-released World Bank report, “World Development Indicators 2016”, has found India’s business entry density, which calculates the number of newly registered limited liability corporations per 1,000 people in the age group 15–64, is one of the lowest in the world.
At just about 0.12 per 1000 people in the age group 15-59, the calculation shows that the world average of business entry density is 4.01. By way of comparison, the density in the United Kingdom is 12.90, in South Africa it is 6.54, in Russia it is 4.20, and in Brazil it is 2.88.
Of course, there is some consolation, as the neighbouring Pakistan’s business entry density is worse than India’s, at just 0.04, and Bangladesh’s 0.09, yet in Sri Lanka it is higher, at 0.51, in Nepal it is 0.69, and in Afghanistan it is 0.15.
A measurement which shows the rate at which new businesses are added to an economy, suggesting dynamism and entrepreneurial activity, the data on business entry density are from the World Bank’s 2015 Entrepreneurship Database, which includes indicators for more than 150 countries.
“Survey data are used to analyze firm creation, its relationship to economic growth and poverty reduction, and the impact of regulatory and institutional reforms”, the World Bank report points out.
Another World Bank source says that the new business entry density would show the number of newly registered firms, in which ownership liability is limited to its investment, per calendar year, normalized by population.

“This is a valuable indicator which quantifies the impact of regulatory, political, and macroeconomic institutional changes on new business registration, a vital component of a dynamic private sector”, it adds.
Data on India’s poor business entry density, significantly, has been revealed at a time when the manufacturing value added as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), claimed to capture the role of manufacturing in an economy, has been nearly stagnant in India.

While worldwide, the World Bank report shows, it is 16 percent, in East Asia and Pacific it is 22 percent, in China it is 32 percent, and in Thailand 28 percent. It says, “In South Asia the share has remained fairly constant since 1990; it was about 17 percent in 2014. Between 1990 and 2014 the share increased slightly, from 16 percent to 17 percent, in India, while Bangladesh registered a larger increase, from 13 percent to 17 percent.”
Coming to yet another measure, of innovation is the intensity of research and development, measured as expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP, the report says, “Worldwide, it increased slightly from 1.6 percent in 2007 to 1.7 percent in 2013, despite the period’s global financial crisis.”
It adds, “Asia was the first to recover; in particular China’s research and development intensity grew from 1.4 percent in 2007 to 2.0 percent in 2013. In other emerging economies the rise was slower — from 1.1 percent in 2007 to 1.2 percent in 2012 in Brazil — or stagnant — around 0.8 percent in 2007 and 2011 in India.”
---
Click HERE to download full report

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog