Patna: Bihar has slipped to the 18th place - a slip of two points - among 36 states and Union Territories (UT) on ease of doing business index for 2017, creating a sense of awkwardness in government departments as the state had been pushing for creating a better investment climate here.

A year ago, the state stood at 16th position in the rankings put by the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), which is under the Union ministry of commerce and industry.

Rubbing insult to injury, neighbouring Jharkhand has achieved the fourth position and has been bracketed among the "top achievers" just behind the top three states - Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Haryana, respectively. Bihar on the other hand is not even among the "achievers". It has been clubbed with "fast movers", along with Himachal Pradesh and Assam.

To top it, the state has only around three-and-a-half months to implement various reforms prescribed by the DIPP to create favourable conditions for entrepreneurs. The cut-off date for the next ease of doing business index is October 31, 2018. On the decline in the ranking, state investment commissioner R.S. Srivastav told The Telegraph: "Bihar's score was 75.82 per cent in 2016, which has improved to 81.91 per cent in 2017. However, other states have reformed more and faster, which has resulted in our rank moving down from 16 in 2016 to 18 in 2017."

"The ease of doing business reforms involve multiple departments of the state. There were 27 reforms pertaining to the industries department and if you look at the scorecard carefully, you will notice all have been accomplished. However, 44 reforms pertaining to labour, urban development and housing, law and a few other departments were not achieved," Srivastav added, throwing light on the reasons behind the slip in ranking.

Srivastav said the country was in a highly competitive federal mode and since investments - foreign and domestic are limited, every state is competing for them.

Sources in the industries department said Bihar would have improved in the ranking, but the DIPP suddenly added 120 more reforms in March 2017 (which coincidentally was the cut-off date for 2016 rankings) and gave the cut-off date for their implementation as October 31, 2017.

"Bihar could not complete them at such a short notice, while many states have been implementing these reforms for the last few years. We were asked to make masterplans for all urban bodies - around 111, complete computerisation of land records, link mutation documents with land records, online approval of building plans, online availability of masterplan. These take time to implement. Still we tried our best and performed better in score, but slipped in the ranking index," an industries department official said.

Bihar also slipped because it received poor feedback from industries and entrepreneurs about various clearances from different departments.

Srivastav said in the current scenario, Bihar has limited time left to improve its rank in the list therefore a time-bound action plan should be made for accomplishing the unimplemented reforms.

"Bureaucracy is an hierarchical system. These reforms involve time-bound actions in eight departments in the state. We can't expect industries department principal secretary to give directions to his batchmates or seniors. Fortnightly monitoring may be done by the chief secretary or development commissioner if we want our ranks to improve," Srivastav added.