Six northern states deliberate on 'ease of doing business'

Lucknow : As part of its exercise towards improving the doing business environment across the states, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) under the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the World Bank held a workshop on "Business Reform Action Plan-2019 (BRAP-2019) Implementation Guidelines and the Feedback Methodology" for north India region in the state capital on Thursday.

In addition to the host Uttar Pradesh, officials concerned from Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh participated in this day-long workshop, an official informed.

There are 80 recommendations under the BRAP-2019. It was informed that ground level feedback of users would be the main criteria of ranking under BRAP-2019 and feedback would be taken on all the implemented reforms. The implementation deadline is February 28, 2019.

Addressing the participants, Chief Secretary Anup Chandra Pandey said that the Uttar Pradesh government is making concerted efforts to ease the doing business environment in the state by continuously strengthening the single-window clearance portal - Nivesh Mitra. He said that in addition to 70 services of 20 departments, the government is in the process of integrating new industrial services to the online portal.

"Additionally, we hold regular interactions with industrialists to resolve their issues in a time-bound manner," he added.

Pandey said that tremendous response of investors to new measures and investment-friendly policies is a testimony to state government's successful efforts in this direction.

World Bank representative Harsh Jhanjaria said improving the business climate is a dynamic and evolving process, adding that India has witnessed significant improvement in actual implementation of the World Bank recommendations during the last three years. He informed that 17 states implemented over 90 per cent reforms in the year 2017-18.

It may be noted that from a ranking of 142 in the year 2014, India jumped to 77th position in the world ranking for ease of doing business, which is the highest jump by any country in a short period period of time. Now India ranks first amongst the South Asian countries.

Highlighting the fact that Uttar Pradesh secured "Achiever State" category with 92.89 per cent score in the implementation of business reform points, Principal Secretary, Infrastructure & Industrial Development - Rajesh Kumar Singh said Udyog Bandhu has been taking the business reforms to ground level through training workshops at division level for awareness amongst government officials and entrepreneurs. Such workshops have been held in 14 divisions of the state so far.