Ease of doing business will reduce time & costs in obtaining clearances & ensuring compliances
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has cautioned the states that unless they resolve the difficulties in the way of doing business through business process engineering and online project clearances, India's quest for achieving a growth rate of 7.5% over a 30 year period will remain a pipedream.Addressing a workshop on 'Digitization of Clearances for Setting-up Projects' organized by FICCI in association with Project Monitoring Group, Cabinet Secretariat, Mr. Amitabh Kant, Secretary, DIPP, said India's ranking in the Work Bank's ease of doing business index could rise from 126 to 50, if the states adopt a new mindset and muster the administrative will to follow the good practices made available to them by DIPP in according project clearances. If the states grow, India grows and if 10 of the advanced states grow at high growth rates over 30 years, India growth story will see a dramatic change, he said.
He said while radical economic reforms were necessary, these will not solve the problem of unemployment and poverty unless the country facilitates the ease of doing business.
He assured the states that DIPP will be a key partner in facilitating the process change that the states need to implement and the Department was willing to provide the best of consultants to ensure the success of their efforts.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion is implementing the eBiz project which will create an investor centric hub -and-spoke based online single window model for providing clearances and filing compliances. This project will provide a single platform to avail business and investment related services. It will provide a bouquet of services through a single composite form and a single payment mechanism which can be apportioned, split and routed to the respective heads of account of Central / State / Parastatal agencies along with generation of challans and MIS reports.
This project will result in radical improvements in ease of doing business by reducing time, efforts and costs taken in obtaining clearances and ensuring compliances. Integration with Central Government services is being done on highest priority.
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The workshop was attended by representatives of industry's departments of six states - Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh. At present as many as 57 clearances fall within the domain of the states. The workshop reviewed each of these in a bid to identify and eliminate the bottlenecks and streamline processes.
DIPP, on its part, has sent an advisory to all Secretaries of Government of India and Chief Secretaries of the States and Union Territories to simplify and rationalize the regulatory environment. In order to improve the regulatory business environment all departments/State Governments have been requested ensure that all returns are filed on line through a unified form; a checklist of required compliances is placed on Ministry's/Department's web portal; all registers required to be maintained by the business are replaced with a single electronic register; no inspection is undertaken without the approval of the Head of the Department; and for all non-risk, non-hazardous businesses a system of self-certification is introduced.
Mr. Anil Swarup, Additional Secretary, Project Monitoring Group, Cabinet Secretariat, informed the participants that by March 31, 2015, the digital platform, eBiz, will be fully operational and all applications with regard to registration and starting a business can be placed on the portal. The applicant can then track the status of the application and check whether the specified timelines are being adhered to with respect to the application. The complete digitization of filing and tracking applications will revolutionize the ease of doing business, he said.
Mr. Swarup underlined that eBiz initiative, being piloted by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, seeks to provide comprehensive Government-to-Business (G2B) services to business entities with transparency, speed, and certainty. It aims at reducing the points of contact between business entities and government agencies, standardising 'requirement information', establishing single-window services, and reducing the burden of compliance, thereby benefitting stakeholders such as entrepreneurs, industries and businesses, industry associations, regulatory agencies, industrial promotional agencies, banks and financial institutions and taxation authorities.
He said that PMG started with the prime objective to fast track project clearances but realized that reasons for delays were the faulty processes and innumerable approvals required. Hence, it was decided to digitize and re-engineer the processes, wherever required, to expedite project clearances.
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