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Press Release

Government is pushing for wider reforms for Ease of Living for all citizens: Anurag Jain, Secretary DPIIT

Dec 18, 2021

Making Grievance Redressal Effective is a priority for the Government

NEW DELHI, 18 December 2021: Mr Anurag Jain, Secretary DPIIT today said that the government has widened the scope of reforms of ease of doing business to Ease of Living. He added that the country is now focusing on Ease of living in entirety for inclusion of its citizens too along with the industry.

Addressing the 94th FICCI Annual Convention and in the special session where Mr Sandip Somany, Past President FICCI and Chairman of FICCI Taskforce on Ease of Doing business was in conversation with Secretary DPIIT, Mr Jain said that the government has focused on holistic reforms in all the sectors and remarkable efforts of current government have led to easing of a number of compliances across sectors and States. We should aspire to match up with countries like New Zealand and Singapore, the best in class, for actual transformation. The reforms are focused on the actual easing of processes than mere improvements in the ranking. If we continue with the process in the right direction, results will follow, he added.

Mr Jain mentioned that 3 most important projects which they are working on with high priority are PM Gatishakti Project, Ease of Living, and Start-up India. He emphasized on the high interconnectedness of improving EODB and startup ecosystem development.

To reduce the compliance burden, the work has been done in two phases, where about 25,000 compliances have been reduced jointly by the efforts of the States and the Central government. The government is working towards simplification, removal of redundant laws, digitization, and decriminalization to ease the business processes. Highlighting some major reforms, Mr Jain said that commendable work has been done in the area of drone and geospatial maps. These have created an opportunity for open innovation and reduction in cost.

To design the Agenda on Ease of Living, a national Workshop on reduction of compliance burden for ease of living has been scheduled for 22nd December, 2021 during Good Governance Week under Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav. Industry should also make use of the National Single Window portal where 19 Departments and 10 States are already connected and provide feedback to DPIIT for further improvements.

The government is looking up to the businesses for their partnership in identifying the real problems so that they can be targeted and solved. The partnership between government and the industry is crucial to achieve the common objective.

Mr Somany mentioned that increase in India's ranking from 142 to 63 in just a matter of 5 years was commendable and with continued efforts in the right direction, shall place India above countries of South East Asia very soon.

Mr Somany said that FICCI Taskforce on Ease of Doing Business has been set up to specifically look at these aspects. Under this taskforce we have several working groups corresponding to the areas/sectors allocated to us by DPIIT, each led by CEO. It is estimated that nearly 2000 compliances required by an average manufacturing unit in India across nearly 250 Acts.  The taskforce has submitted and uploaded over 230 suggestions for EODB through these groups and Taskforce in areas like Environment, Corporate Law, Legal Metrology, Taxation, Textiles, Furniture, states like Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, North East, UP and many more. Some of these have been resolved in the last few months, thanks to the efforts of DPIIT.

Mr Somany emphasised on consolidation of Rules/Authorities, instead of having separate rules serving the common objectives. For instance, many of the existing departments have similar functions which can be merged in to one. e.g. Factory inspectorate, PESO, Labour department, Boiler Inspectorate, Department of Weights and Measures etc can be merged. Similarly, in waste management five different Acts/Rules for handling factory waste.

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