 "Odisha faces industry body flak for going slow on business ease")
"While the Government of India is pulling out all stops to ease ' Doing Business' in India, the department of mines, Odisha appears to be quite conservative in removing the hurdles of the license raj era", Sangam Kurade, President, FISME wrote to Odisha chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi recently.
When the government introduced Udyog Aadhar, a two-page online format for registration of MSMEs, linked with only the Aadhar number of the entrepreneur, the mines department is asking for 17 pages of documentation with 19 documents attached from small scale buyers with purchase limited to 16 tonnes of minerals, about a truck load per month, he added.
The industry chamber suggested the state government that there is enough scope for further simplifying the application format to two pages with the number of attendant documents to three or four.
"With Odisha leading in smart governance and standing seventh among all states in Ease of Doing Business, we can surely hope that all departments of the state will create benchmarks in facilitating business in India", Kurade said.
It may be noted that the criticism from the industry body has come at a time when the Odisha government is taking conscious steps to improve its ranking in the on 'Ease of Doing Business' Index. Odisha which was ranked seventh in a recent World Bank report on 'Ease of Doing Business' is now aiming to be among the top three states.
Among others, as a measure to do business easily in the state, any industrial unit inside and outside the Idco (Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation) industrial estates with an investment of more than Rs one crore and subject to inspections by multiple authorities are now covered under the Central Inspection Framework where by all the inspectors will go to a factory on one particular day after giving prior notice.
