Ease Of Doing Business Ranking: Here Is Government’s 8-Point Strategy To Make It To The Top 50

Despite a slew of reforms, India’s ranking in the ease of doing business index created by the World Bank Group improved by just one place to 130 in 2017 from a revised rank of 131 in 2016. The disappointing improvement, more than anything else, reflected the gap between policy formulation and actual implementation.

Now, with a series of reforms, the government has also come up with an eight-point strategy to improve the ranking. The strategy was finalised in a meeting chaired by finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday.

Here is a list of eight decisions taken in the meeting:

1. The government will mandate an eBiz portal for starting a business. It will have four functions: registration for PAN (permanent account number), TAN (tax deduction account number), EPFO (Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation) and ESIC (Employee’s State Insurance Corp.).
2. The number of procedures and the number of days required to start a business will both be reduced to four.
3. Shram Suvidha Portal will act as a one-stop destination for the filing of return, challan and making online payment for EPFO and ESIC.
4. The cost and time of export and import will be reduced. The number of direct delivery consignments will be increased to 40 per cent by the department of revenue and the ministry of shipping.
5. The provisions of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code will be implemented through the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
6. To improve India’s score in the ‘Getting Credit’ indicator, the ministry of corporate affairs will work towards creating a single registry of assets.
7. To improve score in the “Enforcing Contracts” indicator, eCourts will be expedited for electronic filing of complaints, summons and payments.
8. To ease ‘Construction Permit,’ procedures will be brought down to eight within 60 days.