Government mulls ways for companies to start business in 4 days

Aiming to break into top 50 best countries to do business, the government has identified key areas wherein complex rules can be eased and procedures to enable businesses to start in four days can be derived.

With India ranked poorly at 130th among 190 nations on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing business index, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley held a meeting, recently to identify areas to improve the business climate and the country’s ranking by cutting down on steps required to start a venture and make easy credit available.

An eBiz portal will provide one-stop shop for dealing with matters related to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs as well as registrations of PAN/TAN and employee provident fund/employee insurance.

“The Ministry of Corporate Affairs, CBDT, the Ministry of Labour and Employment will work towards reducing the number of procedures for starting a business to four and the number of days to start a business also to four,” an official statement said. Currently, it takes a minimum of three weeks to start a company in India.

Shram Suvidha Portal will be the only portal for filing the return, challan and making online payment for the Employee Provident Fund Organisation and the Employee State Insurance Corporation. The Department of Revenue and the Ministry of Shipping will work towards increasing the number of direct delivery consignments to 40 per cent by the end of this month.

They will also have to ensure the cost and time to export and import get reduced substantially to bring India within the top 50.
In the World Bank’s latest ‘Doing Business’ report, which ranks 190 nations on how easy it is for private companies to follow regulations in 11 areas, India comes in at 130.

Though this was an improvement of one place over last year, the World Bank altered how it computed the rankings to give India 130th place in last year’s report, four spots above its position the year before that.

At the meeting, DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said nodal departments have been identified for each indicator which will lead the reform process ensuring the country’s improvement in ranking across the 10 indicators, the statement said.

At the meeting, it was also decided that Ministry of Corporate Affairs will work with the stakeholders concerned so that the provisions including the one recently enabled under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code are implemented through the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).