New Delhi, April 6 (IANS): The central government has given 98 points to states to simplify rules and procedures for ease of doing business, a senior official said on Monday.
"We have given a list of 98 points to the states to act on them with timelines for improving ease of doing business," Amitabh Kant, secretary in the department of industrial policy and promotion secretary told India Inc at a national conference here.
Participating in a session on "For ease of doing business in India, acts, rules and forms need to be simplified", he said the processes involving starting, doing and exiting business have to be made simple and friendly.
"No act (law) should be more than three pages, no rule more than two pages and no form more than one page," Kant said at the day-long session, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Admitting that changing the age-old system was not possible overnight, he said sustained, persistent and hard work would pave way for ease of doing business in the country.
"For ease of trading across borders, we have to reduce forms to three from 14 for exports and three for imports using the e-biz platform," he noted.
Though many state governments have taken initiative to promote ease of doing business, Kant regretted that the country had not allowed micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to grow into big business.
A recent industrial study revealed that MSMEs accounted for 84 percent of industrial employment across the country, with 67 percent of it (84 percent) coming from micro units.
"To help MSMEs to grow into big business, we need size, scale and speed," Kant observed.
In his adress, Hero Corporate Services Ltd chairman Sunil Kant Munjal said that India had to create an environment to attract domestic and foreign investment and make it easy to start, run and shut down.
"All pillars, including political, bureaucracy and judicial need to support economic activity," he said.
Bosch Ltd managing director Steffen Berns observed that the country manufactured eight times more cars and 3.5 times more tractors in 2014 than in 1996.
"India has become the sixth largest manufacturer of cars and largest maker of tractors, though other countries have moved faster over the last decade," he said, noting india, to catch up with the others, had to build world class infrastructure, rationalize taxes, streamline labour laws and simplify the approval process for greater transparency.
An agreement was signed on the occasion by CII and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore to create a master plan on ease of doing business in India - Vision 2020.