India needs to improve enforcement of contracts in order to promote ease of doing business in the country, a top government official said today.
Timely resolution of disputes with regard to enforcement of contracts helps in smooth functioning of businesses.
The Commerce and Industry Ministry is working hard to improve ease of doing business in the country but two areas - insolvency laws and enforcement of contracts - are very difficult, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Amitabh Kant said.
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"India is one of the worst countries in the world enforcement of contracts. India ranked 186th out of 189 countries (in this). It is all because lawyers keep taking adjournments. In every contract, 42 per cent of money is eaten away by lawyers. There is a need for a sense of discipline amongst lawyers," Kant said.
He was speaking at the India-UK Business Convention 2015 here.
He said India needs to put in place e-courts and e-judgments and "a radical" change is required in improving enforcement of contracts.
"We need extremely simple laws, not more than 3-4 pages All laws must be very simply written. India has the art of making complex laws...It has learned from the UK," he addded.
Kant said that T K Viswanathan committee is working on insolvency laws.
He said the government has taken several steps to improve India's ranking. It has ranked 142nd among 189 nations in the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business 2015' report. With the exception of two parameters (getting credit and protecting minority investors), India does not feature in the top 100 in the remaining parameters.
By end of the year, as many as 14 central government services and 10 state services are expected to integrated with the e-Biz portal. The move would help in improving the ranking.
He also said there is an urgent need to change the labour and land acquisition laws to push manufacturing.
On India's intellectual property rights regime of India, he said the new National IPR policy is expected to be soon put up before Cabinet for its approval.
The DIPP is also appointing 1,000 examiners in order to remove pendency of patent applications, he added.
