The government will put in place a single-window clearance mechanism to provide quick approvals for development projects by the end of the month, urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said.

Talking about empowering urban local bodies, Naidu said that they need to become credit-worthy. “I am going to allow urban development bodies to use the money given by me as seed capital so that they can get finance from banks,” Naidu said.

New Delhi: He also stated that there was a need to further cut down on the number of permissions required so that the time-lag between the decision to invest and the actual investment can be shortened significantly.

The minister said that to adjudicate quickly upon investment related matters, a commercial division is being constituted in all high courts.

The changes would be the most ambitious overhaul to date of rules governing the liquidation or revival of companies in India, a country with no single bankruptcy code and where competing laws, unclear jurisdictions and inadequate resources can leave cases languishing for decades.

Under current rules, even deciding whether to save or liquidate an ailing company can take years, leaving it in the hands of managers who can - and do - strip assets with impunity. Under the proposed changes, a decision would have to be reached in 180 days - even 90 days for fast-track applications, Viswanathan said.

Current legislation - especially the Sick Industrial Companies Act of 1985 - is geared towards reviving companies, so appeals frequently follow a wind-up order, resulting in virtual paralysis.

For an investor-friendly business environment, what’s required is greater transparency, including in political and electoral funding, which will replace systemic corruption with easier-to-tackle opportunistic corruption. The fact is that the changed ranking has been largely due to procedural improvement in getting an electricity connection, where India’s global rank has risen from 137th to 70th. But the Doing Business report covers only Mumbai and Delhi. The scenario nationally may be quite different.

NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modi government's attempts to improve the ease of doing business have yielded good result with the country jumping 12 ranks to 130 in the latest ranking compiled by the World Bank.

India was ranked 142 in the ranking for 2015.

Singapore has topped the ranking again. India's distance to frontier (DTF) score used to compile the rankings improved to 54.68 in 2016 from 53.97 in 2015.

The cut-off date for the ranking was June 1, implying that the improvement has been achieved in a short span on one year of this government taking over. In 2015 ranking, the last one of UPA government, India had slipped a few notches to 142.

The improvement in the national ranking comes from, essentially, a few procedural changes in how Delhi's power distribution company BSES gets new connections to customers in south, east and west Delhi.

Finally, the quality of drafting of the tax law is not its only constraint on the ease of doing business - India ranked 157th in the world in terms of the ease of paying taxes. According to the report, 243 hours a year are devoted by business to paying taxes, which they have to do as many as 33 times, at an effective tax rate of close to 60 per cent of profits.

Under the proposed amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, an arbitrator will have to settle a case within 18 months. However, after the completion of 12 months, certain restrictions will be put in place to ensure that the arbitration case does not linger on, the sources said.

The amendments to the law come amidst keenness of the government to attract the greater foreign investment. Certain foreign companies were said to be hesitant to do business in India because of the long-drawn litigations.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi boasted about his efforts to make it easier to do business in the country during a recent visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He ticked off 11 jargon-laden bullet points that he said showed the government’s desire to ease “long-pending concerns of investors.”

India ranks 142 out of 189 countries in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index, two places lower than when Mr. Modi took office. And the government’s efforts to improve remain a work in progress.

“We have expedited regulatory clearances including security and environmental clearance,” Mr. Modi said.

The Environment Ministry says that between May 2014, when Mr. Modi came to power, and the end of September 2015, it had given 788 large-scale industrial projects the environmental go-ahead. That compares with 498 such permissions in the year ended March 31, 2014, and 439 in the 12 months before that.