The 53rd National Maritime Day will be celebrated this time with a theme 'Ease of doing business in the maritime sector,' said Captain S K Das, chairman of National Maritime Day Celebrations Committee.Addressing mediapersons here on Friday, he said the celebrations would take place at Seafarers Club on 5 April and Cyril C George, chairman, Chennai Port Trust will be the chief guest.

Government is working on a proposal to make PAN(Permanent Account Number) a unique identity for business entities with a view to improving ease of doing business and ensuring a company is incorporated in a day using an integrated e-biz portal.

To make life easier for millions of importers, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has launched ‘SWIFT’, an initiative to speed up clearances for consignments and improve ‘ease of doing business.’

Single Window Interface for Facilitating Trade (SWIFT) provides a single-point interface for clearance and is expected to reduce documentation and costs. It is expected to cover and benefit over 97 per cent of India’s imports. Importers will not need to run around to get approvals from multiple government agencies for their consignments.

The Department Tourism has further simplified the procedures for registration or renewal of Tourist Units through a Single Window clearance mechanism. This is aimed at further improving the Ease of Doing Business in Tourism sector.
Under the new guidelines which supersede previous Government Order No.229-TSM dated 02.06.2015, online /offline applications for registration / renewal / transfer of registration of Tourist Units under the Registration of Tourist Trade Act, 1978 shall be submitted to the respective Directors of Tourism as per simplified check lists where self-certification of many documents by the applicant has been prescribed.

To understand how India makes its own life difficult in the Ease of Doing Business stakes, one needs only to look at the $16-billion pharmaceutical sector, already in the news for a controversial ban on several household medications.

While the ban has hogged the headlines, there’s another, quiet recall of drugs set to happen, and it’s no less of a logistical, and avoidable, nightmare.

Every year, the government comes out with a revision of prices of essential medications, which is good and proper given that most Indians pay for healthcare from their own pockets and the authorities need to keep a beady eye on profiteering.

DIPP will soon have a portal up and running where states will update their progress on a set of 340 development parameters on a real-time basis, in a move aimed at promoting competition to improve ease of doing business.The ranking will be done based on the report card of the states.

Around 59 percent of employees working in micro medium and small enterprises (MSMEs) are skilled, 21 percent are on job training and 20 percent are unskilled, says a collaborative research report by PHD Chamber and Avian Media.

"About 42 percent of the respondent MSMEs conduct skill development training programmes for their employees, of them 69 percent believe that these structured programmes benefit their organisations in terms of improving know-how, reducing knowledge gaps among employees and enhancing their capabilities to handle responsibilities," the report stated.

After achieving 7th position in the ‘Ease of doing business Indices’ at national level, Odisha now strides ahead to be one among the first three states in this arena.

A high level review meeting to this effect was held today under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Parsad Padhi in secretariat conference hall today, wherein Principal Secretary Industry Sanjeeb Chopra presented the updates for discussion.

Reviewing the progress, Chief Secretary Padhi directed concerned departments to expedite the implementation of remaining reform agenda.  Time schedule was set for against compliance to each of the action points.