The pharma exporters are annoyed by the customs department's poor maintenance and no updates of records related to submission of documents and payment by the exporters. In spite of submitting documents and payments, the customs department is not updating their records and harassing exporters by sending show cause notices. The exporters are facing many problems from customs from being blacklisted to receiving show cause notices which restrain exporters from exporting. The customs department blacklisted exporting companies for not receiving Export Obligation Discharge (EOD) certificate. The delay in EOD certificate by DGFT caused trouble to the exporters and also led to the cancellation of export orders from some countries. 
The pharma exporters are questioning government's initiative of ease of doing business in the country after being harassed by the customs department. They demand customs department to function more effectively so that it encourages pharma exports. 

Implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from April 1, 2017 would further improve India’s competitiveness and ease of doing business ranking, finance minister Arun Jaitley said. The finance minister’s remarks come after the World Economic Forum released the Global Competitiveness Index, according to which India climbed 16 places to the 39th spot in the index among 138 countries as against 55th position last year.

“It (Global Competitiveness Index) significantly holds a mirror on where we are doing well and what we need to improve. And I think, keeping the popular aspirations and reform agenda of the government, there is a possible continuous improvement in the goods market through the GST. I am sure that this momentum in the last two years, when we moved from position 71 to 39, there is a consistency and therefore we also know where we are to improve,” Jaitley said.

India jumped 16 places in the World Economic Forum's (WEF) 2016-17 Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) to emerge as the highest rising economy due to improvement in goods market efficiency, business sophistication and innovation. India was ranked 39 out of 138 countries which were reviewed. This is the second year in a row that the country has climbed 16 places in the ranking, according to WEF.

Switzerland, Singapore and the US remain as the world's most competitive economies. China ranks 28 in the index. Among the other BRICS countries, Russia is ranked 43rd, South Africa at 47, while Brazil declined six notches to end up at 81.

The Mumbai Centre for International Arbitration (MCIA), India’s first major centre for commercial arbitration, will be launched in Mumbai on 8 October. The centre, being set up with the view of making India a hub of international commercial arbitration and helping ensure ease of doing business, is a joint venture between the Maharashtra government, industry members and the legal fraternity.

Experts see MCIA as an alternative forum that Indian businesses can approach instead of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre and the London Court of International Arbitration.

Under ease of doing business, civic chief Ajoy Mehta approved the cancellation of 27 permissions required earlier. The 27 include approvals from shops and establishments, the public health department, the fire brigade department and the development plan department.

“As per Section 390 of Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 46 permissions from building and factory department were required to manufacture or process anything in Mumbai. Surprisingly, 27 permissions were given by other departments of the BMC. Some of the permissions were given by the Centre and the state. So to avoid the duplication of permissions, the civic body has cancelled 27 permissions,” said an official.

As many as a dozen states, including Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Jharkhand, have implemented 75% of the reform initiatives under the ease of doing business programme, reflecting positive sentiments, commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday. These three states are followed by Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab and Karnataka in implementing reforms. The government, however, has maintained that the review process of the reform initiatives is still on and the current rankings may change.

The ranking of states is an assessment of the regulatory performance of states and a measure of how they improve over a period of time. Importantly, the rankings don’t accurately reflect the level of business-conducive nature of the states; rather, it shows how the states fared in implementing an action plan adopted by them with the help of the Centre within a particular time frame.

To facilitate the ease of doing business, Sebi today decided to provide permanent registration to merchant bankers, investment advisers, research analysts and eight other categories of market intermediaries. 

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) already gives permanent registration to stock brokers and sub-brokers subject to their compliance with certain requirements. The proposal to grant permanent registration to 11 more categories of market intermediaries was cleared by Sebi's board during its meeting here today. 

Apart from merchant bankers and investment advisers, permanent registration would be granted to registrar to an issue and share transfer agent, bankers to an issue, underwriters, credit rating agency and debenture trustee.

Goa needs to think harder and work more aggressively to attract far more investments than it has so far managed to get in competition with other states. Investments are coming but not coming consistently and in an upward spiral. The state authorities have made claims of getting investment proposals but a study of Goa’s investment scenario by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) tells a story contrary to the claim of the state authorities. It would be wrong to dismiss the ASSOCHAM report totally as a figment of imagination or based on outdated statistics as it draws a good deal from the state economic surveys. It does not paint an entirely negative picture. It points out that the growth rate of inflow of new investments was over 91 per cent in 2014-15 but dipped to about 9 per cent in 2015-16. It talks about the unsteady, volatile and unpredictable graph of the investment flow and expresses concern over it. The study points out that as of 2015-16, Goa attracted investments worth about Rs 26,000 crore, which include all projects under various stages of announcement or implementation but the growth in investments has not been picked up.