Does the ease-of-doing-business rank still apply?
No. The World Bank stopped the Doing Business report in 2021, so a rank from 2020 is not a score that is still being updated. The company-law changes made in the same year are a separate matter, and they are in the Act.
Is the 2020 rank still published?
Doing Business 2020 was the last edition of that series. The Bank discontinued it in September 2021 after reviewing how the data had been handled. There is no later rank to quote from that report. A country’s place in a stopped series does not change a filing date or a tax rate.
What did the 2020 amendment change?
The Companies (Amendment) Act, 2020, took a set of offences out of the criminal calendar and replaced imprisonment with a monetary penalty in the sections it amended. It also let the Central Government, with SEBI, exclude certain classes of securities from the “listed company” test, and it widened the exemption from filing some loan resolutions so that a registered non-banking financial company and a housing finance company sit with a banking company. Those are changes to the Act. They are not a fresh ranking.
Which of those changes are already the rule?
Two of them are the rules already used on the CSR pages. If the amount to be spent does not exceed ₹50 lakh, the board discharges the committee’s functions. That test is on the CSR applicability page. If the unspent amount is not transferred, section 135(7) sets the penalty: for the company, twice the amount to be transferred or ₹1 crore, whichever is less; for the officer in default, one-tenth of that amount or ₹2 lakh, whichever is less. A small company and a one person company have the half penalty in section 446B, on the small-company page.
What should this page not be used for?
Not as a list of fines from the 2020 bill. Where a section was amended again after 2020, the later text is the law. A proposal in a bill that is still a bill, including the Companies Amendment Bill of 2026, is not this Act. Direct listing of Indian shares abroad exists only to the extent the Act and the rules have actually prescribed it.
Frequently asked questions
Four questions cover the rank, the Act, the CSR committee, and the penalty.
Is India still scored each year?
Not by that report. The World Bank discontinued Doing Business in 2021. A later year does not have a new rank in that series.
Did the 2020 bill stay a bill?
No. It became the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2020. What that Act changed is the law. A proposal in a later bill is not.
Must every company still have a CSR committee?
A company whose CSR amount does not exceed ₹50 lakh does not have to constitute the committee. The board does that work. The spend test itself is unchanged.
Did the amendment remove the unspent-CSR penalty?
No. It replaced imprisonment with a penalty. The company pays up to twice the untransferred amount or ₹1 crore, whichever is less. The officer pays up to one-tenth or ₹2 lakh, whichever is less.
Sources
The World Bank discontinued the Doing Business report in 2021. The company-law changes of that period are the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2020. CSR is section 135.