MUMBAI: Alarmed by large-scale delays and rampant red-tapism, the forest department on Thursday promulgated a 15-page order that permission for felling trees to set up industries should be granted within 30 days in special cases. A senior bureaucrat said proposals for industrial purposes will be expedited and tree-felling permission granted within 30 days as a special case, while in other cases, the application will be disposed of within 60 days, failing which it will be presumed that the deemed felling permission has been given to the applicant.

In view of procedural delays, the department of industrial policy and promotion has communicated a reform action plan on ease of doing business and informed that states will be ranked based on the measures taken to opertionalize the plan. One of the important reforms relates to the ease with which permission for felling of trees is accorded while establishing new industry in order to facilitate ease of doing business. "The reform action plan has identified basic issues relating to tree-felling permission granted by the forest department. As there were no specific guidelines, for the first time, a deadline has been fixed while granting permission," the bureaucrat said.

NEW DELHI: Half a day to reserve the name and a third to incorporate a company, the corporate affairs ministry’s push towards improving ease of doing business is on a roll and getting results. 

The fact that the time taken for company incorporation was two days in February and to just about a day in March, shows how effective the policy initiatives have been within a month. The ministry attributes this to simplified procedures and reduction in time and fees, through the successful implementation of e-governance initiatives such as the MCA21 portal and SPICe (Simplified Proforma for Incorporating Company Electronically) forms. 

Marketed under a larger scheme of ‘government process re-engineering’, these initiatives have “…resulted in speed, greater transparency, uniformity, and eradication of discretion”, according to the ministry notification. 

NEW DELHI: The commerce and industry ministry on Wednesday discussed with the World Bank officials its concerns over the methodology used for ranking countries in terms of ease of doing business. Senior officials of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and World Bank representatives deliberated on the issue. "Detailed interaction with world bank doing biz team in Washington DC have resulted in much better awareness of our reforms," DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said in a tweet.

"The bank team also sensitised on our various concerns on methodological and other issues. All depts/agencies made excellent presentations," he further said. The World Bank carries out this exercise ever year for the purpose of ranking countries on their ease of doing business, from 1-190

To speed up the process, the government is planning to dissolve the Finance Ministry Committee that is responsible to approve the public-private partnership (PPP) projects. The market experts said the move by the government is appreciable which would save much more time of Cabinet.
 
As per the current rules and regulations, PPP projects which are more than Rs 1000 cr in value are sent to the PPP Approval Committee and then to the Cabinet for final approval. The government has plans to hand over the PPP projects approval duty to the Niti Aayog. The move by the government may boost the ease of doing business. The Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley had announced the scraping of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) in his Union Budget speech.
 

NEW DELHI: The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion along with the World Bank has released a list of 405 business process reforms on which the states will be ranked on ease of doing business this year. The states will have to implement these reforms by October 31. The government will then gather feedback from users to assess the action taken on the ground. 

The reforms have been classified into 11 broad areas including labour regulation, contract enforcement, registering property, inspection enablers, single-window system, land availability and allotment, and construction permit. The states will also have to make processes easier for environmental registration, obtaining utility permits for water and electricity, paying taxes and access to information and transparency. 

The World Bank has agreed to widen the scope of the ease of doing business rankings for India by expanding it to eight more cities. Disclosing this, Nirmala Sitharaman, minister of state (independent charge) for commerce and industry, said the move would improve the quality of the index as the survey will cover 10 cities. At present it is restricted to two cities— New Delhi and Mumbai. India has been very keen to improve its position in the ease of doing business rankings conducted by the World Bank. At present, India is ranked 130 and is seeking to improve this to 90.

Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of Indian Industry, a business lobby, welcomed the move. “The index will now be more representative of the country.” Sitharaman argued that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is pushing for economic reforms, citing the passage of the last batch of legislations on the goods and services tax (GST) in the just concluded session of Parliament as an example.

India was disappointed with the last ease of doing business report by the World Bank and now wants to improve its positive by at least 80 spots. Last year, India improved by just one spot and was at 130th position among 189 countries. Since the World Bank has started taking feedback for the next round of ease of doing business ranking, the Indian Government is reaching out to respondents and nodal departments to ensure they are aware of the reforms undertaken. 

The World Bank is taking user feedback across 189 countries and interacting with the users before acknowledging the reforms. Lack of positive feedback on the ground was one of reasons cited for India's poor show in the global ranking even though the government took many measures to improve the business environment. 

In another move to improve ease of doing business in India, the Income Tax Department has tied up with the Corporate Affairs Ministry (MCA) to issue Permanent Account Numbers (PAN) and Tax Deduction Account Numbers (TAN) within a day, an official said on Tuesday. "The Central Board of Direct Taxes has tied up with MCA to issue Permanent Account Number (PAN) and Tax Deduction Account Number (TAN) in one day," a Finance Ministry statement said.

"Applicant companies submit a common application form SPICe (INC 32) on the MCA portal and once the data of incorporation is sent to the Central Board of Direct Taxes by MCA, the PAN and TAN are issued immediately without any further intervention from the applicant," it said.