Odisha kicks off process to reach out to industries for business reforms

As states vie to grab a higher share of virgin investments, Odisha has kicked off the process of reaching out to industries for business reforms.

To commence, the state government hosted the maiden workshop at Angul to sensitize the industry on a suite of business reforms. This is a part of a series of workshops to be stage later. Senior officials drawn from Industrial Promotion & Investment Corporation of Odisha Ltd (Ipicol), the state’s one-stop investment promotion agency and the Directorate of Industries sensitised the stakeholders.

The workshops are being organised under the rubric of ‘Business Reform Action Plan' (BRAP) at six key industrial hubs in Odisha- Angul, Bhubaneswar, Balasore, Berhampur, Sambalpur and Sundargarh. The state government aims to reach out to 720 industries through these workshops.

Beginning Tuesday, these workshops conducted in a staggered manner, will continue till the first week of November. Apart from making the industry more amenable to the next generation of business reforms, the workshops will aim to iron out various issues faced by the industrial units across locations.

Overall, the workshops are designed to burnish the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ image for Odisha. It may be recalled that at the last EoDB ratings, Odisha shed four slots to finish at 11th rank. Though Odisha earned the tag of ‘leader state’, it trailed other competing states in implementation of an array of business reforms. Whilst the state government rolled out a string of reforms to ease business process, it failed to reap the dividends due to lack of ample awareness and sensitization among the industries.

To ease investor hassles, the state government had launched the Government of Odisha Single Window Investor Facilitation & Tracking (GO-SWIFT). The one stop portal, the only of its kind in the country, addresses the entire life cycle of an investment from conception and implementation and beyond. In less than two years of its roll out, the portal has received 1000 proposals. GO-SWIFT provides all information and clearances that investors need in a time-bound, hassle-free, paperless and transparent manner. Entirely online, the launch of GO-SWIFT has improved the efficiency of the approval process for both new and existing industries across 32 services from 15 state departments.

The investor dashboard on the portal allows users to track the real-time status of their application and get alerts via SMS and email. GO-SWIFT also has a department dashboard for senior government officials to use and track the industrial units in the state.