India ranks 71 on WEF trade index

NEW DELHI: India has been ranked 71 among 118 countries in a list
prepared by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for measuring openness to
international trade.

The poor show in the enabling trade index (ETI) of WEF's Global
Enabling Trade Report 2008 has been largely attributable to tariff
barriers and "severely restricted" market access.

The country was ranked 105 in terms of market access, below neighbours
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. And despite autonomously bringing
down average tariff on industrial goods to 10% and agriculture to
about 33%, India was at the bottom of the pile in the category of
tariff barriers with a rank of 115. Only three countries were below
India in this segment.

The ETI, released on Wednesday as part of WEF's inaugural report, is
based on four sub-indices which include market access, border
administration, transport and communication infrastructure, and
business environment. India got much higher ratings in the indices
other than market access. India was ranked 52 in infrastructure, 55 in
border administration and 58 in business environment.

The top place in the overall index went to Hong Kong, which was also
ranked first in market access. It was followed by Singapore. The two
Asian countries were followed by Sweden, Norway, Canada, Denmark and
Finland. The US was ranked 14 and the UK was at 16th spot in the
overall index. Some notable countries below India in the overall index
include Brazil (80), Pakistan (84) and Russia (103).

"The principal aim of this report is to measure the extent to which
countries around the world have in place the factors and policies for
enabling trade," the WEF said.

Another area where India performed poorly was airport density where it
was ranked 117. In road congestion, the country was ranked third.