By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, July 11, 2018: Shaken by the dip in the ranking from 11th to 14th position in the ease of doing business, the Odisha government on Wednesday said it would resolve to work towards making it one of the best investment destinations in the country.

The annual business ranking of states and union territories was released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Tuesday. While Odisha’s ranking was 7th in 2015, it slid to 11th place in 2016.

“We will further improve the position. The state has already made significant strides in implementing ease of doing business reforms with the compliance percentage going up from 52.15 per cent in 2015 to 92.09 per cent in 2017,” Industries Secretary Sanjeev Chopra said.

In the latest rankings, Odisha has been placed under the ‘achievers’ category along with West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

“The top 14 states are bunched in a close range of six per cent and there isn’t much to differentiate among them. It is important to see the ranking in the context of increasing competition among the states to attract investments,” he told reporters.

Odisha’s “investor-friendly policies” and the development of “world-class infrastructure” have received very positive feedback from investors across the country, he said.

Odisha has seen a significant rise in attracting manufacturing projects with “more than 118 large projects approved with employment potential of 1,28,572” in the past four years alone, a release issued by the Industries Department said.

It said that a recent ‘Invest India-World Bank’ survey on investment promotion preparedness had ranked Odisha as an ‘Aspiring Leader’ among 21 states.

With the objective of attracting 2.5 lakh crore of fresh investments and generating 30 lakh job opportunities as part of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s Vision – 2025, the state government is diversifying and broadening Odisha’s industrial development, the statement said.

Odisha has registered a GSDP growth rate of 7.94 per cent in 2016-17, surpassing the national growth rate of 7.1 per cent, it said.