Uttar Pradesh to join top ranking states, courtesy reforms
Uttar Pradesh looks forward to joining the club of country’s top ranking states with the most favourable business environment when the Central government comes out with its ease of doing business report for the year, possibly next month.
Uttar Pradesh looks forward to joining the club of country’s top ranking states with the most favourable business environment when the Central government comes out with its ease of doing business (EoDB) report for the year, possibly next month.
The recent introduction of labour reforms, the lack of which is understood to be pulling it down on the EoDB ladder, has brightened the state’s chances of improving its rank significantly vis-à-vis that of the last year.
“We have done a lot of things to improve various services and relaxing various regulations and hope UP to fare very well on the ease of doing business index to be released by the Centre’s department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) anytime this month or next month,” principal secretary, industrial development, Alok Sinha said.
The main areas of assessment of EoDB this year include paper-less courts/offices, online tax payment, single window system, labour law reforms, obtaining an electricity and a water connection, environmental clearances, issuance and renewal of various business licences, digitisation of records, setting up special courts for commercial disputes, among other things.
In 2016, UP, with the business reform implementation score of 84.52% with regard to all the parameters, stood at the 14th position in the EoDB rankings.
Though the state slipped by four positions from where it stood in 2015, the state’s performance improved in terms of score which was then only 47.37 % that year.
“The indications are that UP will score more than 95% this year,” Sinha claimed.
What may actually help the state climb up the EoDB ladder this time is amendment to many labour laws, something which additional chief secretary, RK Tiwari claims has been done for the first time since Independence.
“Self-certification by industries with the provision of the inspection only once a year, random inspection of 20% establishments selected through a software, two-year exemption from inspection to start-ups and increasing over-time limit from 50 hours to 100 hours in factories and from 100 hours to 125 hours in commercial establishments,” are only some of the new enabling provisions that will help create even a better business climate in the state,” he claimed.
“Though the calculations still continue, UP has already achieved 95.12% score this year and this is a significant jump on the EoDB index,” additional secretary, DIPP, Shailendra Singh said. The 2017, he said was the best year for UP as far as the EoDB was concerned.
He said while regulations must be relaxed to do away with the inspector raj, inspections, per se, were not bad. “Inspections are also a part of training for the industries since this is during inspections that many shortcomings are pointed out to them asking them to take corrective measures,” Singh said.
The DIPP had begun the EoBB raking of states in 2015 as a part of its business reform action plan (BRAP) to promote a competitiveness among states.
Uttar Pradesh, however, wants the DIPP to introduce a grading system in place of the existing ranking system. “We have requested the DIPP to introduce a grading system like ABC, so that the states with similar performance despite their scores being higher or lower by a few pints could be clubbed together,” Sinha said.
“In ranking system a state, which, for example gets an implementation score of 90% secures a rank higher than a state that gets 89.9%,” though their performance in the business action plan is same, he pointed out.