Govt admits 'a lot remains to be done' for entrepreneurship

Admitting that a lot remains to be done to promote entrepreneurship, the Commerce and Industry Ministry today said it will take up all the issues raised by startups with the concerned ministries and regulators.
The Ministry today convened a meeting of 28 startups to know their issues and concerns.
After the meeting, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the participants raised concerns related to taxation, regulators and compliance burden.
"We were keen to know their views on how their start-up activities are going on, their expectations from the government and the difficulties they have. The difficulties may be relating to various ministries... What is it that they want us to do further," she told reporters.

The Ministry, later in a statement, said the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) would be taking steps to address the issues and concerns raised by the startups.
It said the details of the compliances of central and state laws would be posted on the Startup India portal. The DIPP also promised to facilitate the meeting of various startups with the concerned departments so that they can take up their issues directly with them, the statement said.

"DIPP would also explore the possibility of developing an app which would enable startups to know which subject relates to which ministry or regulator; and it would prepare a handbook to guide startups on various compliances and the processes involved," it added.

The Ministry said since the launch of the action plan, considerable progress has been made.
"However, a lot remains to be done. The ministry believes the way forward is to have all the stakeholders on board to take the initiative forward and act as a facilitator for startups to flourish," it said.
With the agenda of creating a conducive ecosystem, the government is reaching out to all stakeholders to discuss key concerns that need to be addressed, the statement said.
During the meeting, Sitharaman said this is the first in a series of dedicated meetings the government will be holding in order to bring all stakeholders of the startup ecosystem on board, which will help India become one of the best business destinations in the world.

She urged the participants to feel free to write to the government on any issues and not wait for a meeting.
Some of the issues that were raised related to making compliances easy, IPR pendency period, lack of prompt response from incubators for issuing recommendation letters, complicated paper work involved in all government compliances, tedious import/export procedures, need of clear definition of Aggregators under the service tax, among others, the Ministry said.
Startups further suggested that as done by the
government, banks should also be asked to exempt the startups from turnover and experience criteria to enable them to participate in the procurement process, the Ministry said.

"The participants mentioned the difficulties faced by them in inter-state movement of goods. They suggested that all states should be asked to take the declarations online and receive taxes online," it said.
Suggestions were also made with regard to doing away with the requirement of maintaining manual registers for compliance under labour laws.
They also mentioned that access of credit through banks should be simplified and the time taken should also be reduced, the Ministry added.
For easier compliance towards various rules and regulations, the participants suggested that a handbook should be prepared and put on public domain.
On intellectual property rights issue, the DIPP informed that the capacities of IPR offices have been enhanced considerably in the last 6 months.

This would reduce the time being taken for examination of patent applications to 18 months by March 2018 compared to over 5 years now.
Similarly the time taken for examination of trademark applications will become 1 month by March 2017.