Bring time frame to introduce industry related services, DIPP tells states

 With the NDA-led government gearing up to accelerate the Make-in-India programme, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has asked the states to fix a timeframe for delivery of all industry-related services by December 31 of this year, including providing land, construction permits, online payment of taxes and environment compliances.

The DIPP in its communication to states also suggested that they adopt a single-window system for giving clearances and put in place an online tracking system to enable the applicants to monitor the progress of their applications and approvals.

Taking the leaf from the parameters laid out in the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ report, the Centre has asked the states to improve the business environment by streamlining the systems, including fixing a time frame for delivery of government services like getting approvals from various regulatory authorities, an official from the DIPP told Deccan Herald.

The Centre, which wanted the states to streamline the system in a phased manner also instructed them to complete it by at least December.

Besides developing the land bank by June end to ensure sufficient sufficient availability to industries, the states are instructed to facilitate payment of taxes online, said the official. The DIPP also suggested the states to segregate the industries under red, green or amber and give clearances accordingly.

The DIPP, which studied best practices in some states like construction permits granted in Odisha, filing of taxes done in Andhra Pradesh, land acquisition process of Haryana and standardisation of property documents in Rajasthan, will ask other states to work on to adopt these methods. As per the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ranking in 2014, India stands at 142nd position  out of 189 countries, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government wanted the country’s rank should be within the top 50 countries in the next few years.

Recently the Centre launched the single-window portal called ‘e-biz’ integrating 11 central services for faster clearance for businesses. In the eBiz portal, an entrepreneur can avail all these services 24x7 online — submission of forms, attachments, payments, tracking of status and obtaining the licence/permit from the portal.b