Business made easy. Twenty six government services for entrepreneurs to be made available online

Starting June, entrepreneurs would be able to apply online for 26 services, including PAN and DIN numbers, through an e-Biz portal, a move to improve ease of doing business.Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Amitabh Kant also said that there is an urgent need for labour reforms in the country.

With the integration of these services on eBiz portal, an entrepreneur can avail of all these services 24x7 online - submission of forms, attachments, payments, tracking of status and obtaining the licence/permit from the portal.

"We have already done that for 14 services and by the end of June we will have 26 central government services (integrated with the e-Biz portal)," Kant said at a function.

He added that by the end of the year 10 states would be integrated with the portal, which was launched in February.

He said that over the time, government intends to have just one form for different types approvals including for water and power connections.

At present, an entrepreneur has to take several approvals and clearances from different authorities in central as well as state government to start or expand business.

"Our objective is that, over a period of time the central government and state government approval should be in one form and one point of payment which will then get disbursed across centre, state and municipality," Kant said.

India has dropped two places and is ranked at 142nd out of 189 countries by the World Bank for ease of doing business.

Government has announced several measures to improve India's ranking. It has reduced the number of mandatory documents required for import and export of goods to three in each case.

The move will lead to reduction in transaction cost and time. Earlier 10 documents are needed to fulfill the official obligations.

"I think we have made India a very complex and difficult country to do business. We need to make India extremely easy, very simple place to do business. We have tried to cut red tapism and have done away with a number of procedural rules, which have been built over the last 60 years," he said.

On boosting manufacturing, he said India needs to produce 10,000 entrepreneurs every year.

"For that to happen, politicians must realise that India needs to grow at 14-15 per cent. You need to depoliticise land, you need to depoliticize labour. We have one of the worst labour laws in the world, the only other country which has worse labour law is Pakistan."

"India must take a call whether we want to be Pakistan or we want to be a developed first class entity," he added.

Source : PTI

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