The World Bank has ranked China way ahead of India in doing business but South Asian economic giant has done better than its neighbours on six of the eleven counts, including access to credit, attracting investors and dealing with licences.

In its report, Doing Business 2008, the World Bank has ranked China at 83rd whereas India occupied the 120th place. However, India's score is better than China in terms of starting a business (111th versus 135th), dealing with licences (134th vs 135th), getting credit (36th vs 84th), employing workers (85th vs 86th), protecting investors (33rd vs 83rd) and paying taxes (165th vs 168th).

India is below China in registering property (112th vs 29th), enforcing contracts (127th vs 20th), closing business (137th vs 57th) and trading across borders (79th vs 42nd).

Sabine Hertveldt, one of the authors of the report, said four hurdles such as delays in litigation, inadequate bankruptcy laws and taxation system, besides dealing with licences led to India's low ranking among 178 economies.

India has been ranked as second last at 177 in the list of 178 economies in enforcing contracts as the judicial systems that affects the efficiency of courts witness a lot of delays and backlog,.

The report brings out a wide disparity between efficiencies of different cities within India. The time to obtain a business licence ranges between 159 days in Bhubaneshwar and 522 in Ranchi. The time to register property ranges from 35 days in Hyderabad to 155 in Kolkata.

If the top score among Indian cities in each of the indicators were used for the country as a whole, India would rise 55 places in the aggregate country rankings. The Indian government is using this information to plan further reform,