Ease of doing business: Centre to 'name and shame' states

Govt to pull up states which do not ease their procedures for doing business, says Amitabh Kant

The central government will “name and shame” states which do not ease their procedures for doing business, says Amitabh Kant, secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Government of India.

“We have listed 98 points on which states have to act, related to starting of a business, starting of construction, labour compliances, getting electricity, availability of land — on all aspects which you deal with the state government,” he said.

Adding: “Our target is by May-end, states should complete the action, and in June and July, we should evaluate the states and bring in a sense of competition. We should rank states as best performing and worst performing. Our objective is to name and shame (lagging) states.”

Kant was addressing the annual regional meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), through a video interaction.

The government will do a detailed evaluation through the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, in June and July, of all the states. He also requested the CII southern council to put pressure on the state governments in the region to act on the 98 points.

The Centre, he said, had begun measures to make India an easy place to do business. These include integrating 14 services of the government of India on an e-Biz platform. Over a period of time, the government will make it one paper and one point of payment.

For 60 years, said Kant, the country had been adding processes, procedures, paperwork, Acts and rules. There has been a mindset of controls at both the Centre and the states. “Our task has been to try and do away with as many controls as possible.”

On import/export, for example, it had issued a notification through which the number of forms to be filled by industry would be brought down from 11 to three, from April 1.

He added the government was in the process of preparing a new foreign trade policy. Foreign direct investment is 36 per cent higher than a year before and this financial year, it would see a record high.

Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of CII, said it would soon establish a new Centre of Entrepreneurship in South India. There are nine such centres in various parts of the country.