NEW DELHI: In an effort to achieve its stated target of taking India into the top 50 in Ease of Doing Business globally, the central government on Tuesday came out with an eight point strategy. Major measures announced include doing away with complex rules and simplifying procedures to enable businesses to start in four days flat, in identified areas.
The strategy was decided upon during a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday. Among the measures decided upon, are an eBiz portal which will provide a one-stop shop for dealing with matters related to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs as well as registrations of PAN/TAN and employee provident fund/employee insurance.
The government “... will work towards reducing the number of procedures for starting a business to four and the number of days to start a business also to four,” an official statement said. It takes a minimum of three weeks to start a company in India currently.
Among other measures, the Shram Suvidha Portal will be made the only portal for filing the return, challan and making online payment for EPFO and ESIC. The department of revenue and the ministry of shipping will work towards increasing number of direct delivery consignments to 40 per cent by the end of December, while ensuring cost and time to export and import gets reduced.
The ministry of corporate affairs will also work with concerned stakeholders so that provisions enabled under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code are implemented through the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). The department of financial services and the ministry of corporate affairs will work on integrating the CERSAI (Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest) database with the Registrar of Company (ROC) to create a single registry of assets.
Commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman also urged that eCourts should be expedited for electronic filing of complaints etc and construction permit procedures will be brought down to eight within 60 days.
Meanwhile, the concerned departments gave a snapshot of the recent reforms, agreed to implement the suggested ones by January 2017 and will hold intensive stakeholder consultations to get their feedback on the reforms undertaken.