"India is among the top 10 reformers in recent years. The effort is there but the level of achievement is not much," Michael Klien, Vice President (private sector development), World Bank, said in New Delhi.
"In terms of the ease with which business can be run, India ranks very poorly," Priya Basu, lead sector specialist, World Bank said.
"If the country can improve by 10 per cent the four parameters of investment climate -- cost of power, business regulations, land laws and access to finance, the turnover of companies can go up by 11 to 16 per cent and the overall economy would grow by about 2 per cent faster," she said.
According to the World Bank report 'Doing Business', it takes a company 89 days to clear all the procedures and start a business in India as against the South Asian average of 46 days.
It takes a company 41 days to start a business in China, 24 days in Pakistan and just 2 days in Australia.
The cost for setting up a business, measured in terms of percentage of per capita income, is 49.5 in India as against South Asian average of 45.4, Pakistan 36, China 14.5 and nil in Denmark.
Rigidities in labour laws have pulled down India's rank in terms of difficulty in hiring and firing employees. While the index measuring the difficulty of hiring is as high as 33, it is 11 for China and nil for Hong Kong, Israel, Kuwait, Malaysia, Australia and the US.