Huge gap between action, perception on ease of doing business: NITI Aayog

There is a huge gap between what the state governments have done to improve ease of doing business and what the enterprises know of these improvements, a NITI Aayog report has found.

In its "Ease of Doing Business" survey report, released by Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Industry and Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday, the government's premier policy think-tank found that enterprises are often unaware of initiatives taken by states in recent years for clearances and permissions.

"For instance on single-window clearance: are enterprises even aware of this facility? We got surprising results," said NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya.

He said that even among start-ups -- which are set up in the last three years, only 20 per cent of them said that they were aware of the existence of single-window facility.

According to the report, even among the experts, only 41 per cent reported having knowledge of the existence of the facility.

"There is clearly a huge gap between what has been done and what enterprises know," Panagariya said.

"To actually take full advantage of ease of doing business that has been created, there is a need to disseminate information about what is there to be known for enterprises which are the ones doing business."

While releasing the report which covers more than 3,000 enterprises across India, Sitharaman said it may be the last but the "most important" contribution from Panagariya, who leaves the NITI Aayog on August 31 to return to his academic career in the US.

She said the report would give a complete and true picture of the business environment of the country.

The minister added that the ease of doing business was the priority of the government and is getting full attention.

Prasad said that the nation was making huge strides in the field of digital infrastructure and called for a separate index for measuring digital ecosystem of states.

The survey, which covers over 3,000 enterprises across India, makes an effort to assess ease of doing business from their perspective as opposed to the perspective of policy makers.

Panagriya said that while this report takes the entire country into account and tries to bring forward national trends on different issues, there will be a second report based on the survey which will focus on individual states.

--IANS

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