Govt working on 1st ever 'cost of regulation' study for states: DPIIT secy

DPIIT has created a dataset to let the States know how some of the areas may be affecting them in terms of their 'business-friendly reputation'

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has completed a first-of-its-kind study to assess the cost of services across states and union territories (UTs), Industry Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said on Saturday.

While this is not a ranking exercise, DPIIT’s idea was to enable the states and UTs to do a self-assessment on how cost of regulation figures vary across other states and thereafter take their own measures to reduce their cost of regulation.

DPIIT has created a dataset to let the States know—without converting it into a political issue—how some of the areas may be affecting them in terms of their ‘business-friendly reputation’. Some of the areas include liquidity, building permissions, environmental clearance, and the fees related to that. As many as 13 sectors have been covered under the study.

The study is not in the public domain yet.

“…there are tremendous variations across the country when it comes to these 13 services that we tried to cover, in terms of average cost of regulations. In one state, it may be Rs 50 lakhs for accessing these 13 services on average, in another state the average may be as low as Rs 15 lakhs,” Singh said at the Ficci's 96th Annual General Meeting.

“We are talking about a huge, almost Rs 17,000 crores of cost of regulation during that assessment period, which was a one and a half years’ period last year,” he said.