Andhra Pradesh has topped the Ease of Doing Business (EDB) list compiled by a team of researchers led by Tan Khee Giap, who is the co-director of Asia competitiveness institute (ACI), and associate professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

Andhra is followed by Maharashtra and Delhi.

In the latest ranking of Asia Competitiveness Institute's (ACI) EDB index, Andhra Pradesh bagged the top rank in 2018.

Expressing delight over the announcement, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said, "International investors look for a stable government with strong policies before coming forward for investments. The state government would take into consideration the observations including weaknesses and try to strengthen those areas."

The chief minister also announced that his government was planning to distribute smartphones to each family for ease of living.

"Nearly 14 million smartphones should be manufactured for distribution in the state," Naidu said.

The Singapore institute also suggested areas where improvement was needed in the state. The report mentioned that despite Andhra Pradesh's excellent performance in ACI's EDB Index, the government needs to bridge numerous institutional and infrastructural gaps in order to sustain its position in the future.

The ACI team highlighted that there was sufficient room for improvement in sub environments such as facilitating business operations, infrastructure resilience and market potential.

Worker density, foreign direct investment per capital, labour productivity, and illiteracy rate were identified as the weakest indicators for the state among others.

The ACI team also emphasised that an analysis at the indicator level will help identify specific areas of improvement and will play a crucial role in making Andhra Pradesh the best investment destination by 2050.

Asia Competitiveness Institute at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore was established as a research centre in 2006 with an aim to build intellectual leadership and network for understanding and developing competitiveness in the Asia region.