Report No. 253

(ii) Improving the international image of the Indian justice delivery system

As the 188th Report of the Law Commission also discussed in some detail, there is an impression among foreign investors and companies that India is a difficult place to do business, inter alia, for reasons of the slowness and inefficiency of the judicial system. This is also reflected in the World Bank's annual "Doing Business" report, which measures business regulations.

This report, inter alia, looks at the ease or difficulty of enforcing contracts in a given nation.37 Among 189 nations surveyed in the 2014 report, India was ranked 186th in the category of "Enforcing Contracts", unchanged from its 2013 position.38 According to the data collected by the Bank, contract enforcement takes 1,420 days (i.e. nearly four years) and costs of enforcement aggregate to nearly 40% of the value of the claim.

Since the World Bank first started the series of reports in 2004, these numbers have not changed, either in terms of number of days it takes to enforce the contract or the costs involved. The Report also finds that there has been no major reform in India in the last six years in contract enforcement.39

37. The World Bank, Doing Business 2014; Economy Profile: India, available at
<http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/~/media/giawb/doing%20business/documents/profiles/country/IND.pdf?ver=2>.

38. The World Bank, Doing Business 2013: Smarter Regulation for Small and Medium-Size enterprises, available at
<http://www.doingbusiness.org/~/media/GIAWB/Doing%20Business/Documents/Annual-Reports/English/DB13-full-report.pdf>.

39. World Bank, supra note 37, at 90-93.

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