Single window clearance for investments by April next year

The government will be ready with a single window investment clearance IT platform by the April next year, said the secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Guruprasad Mohapatra in an event organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) today.

Mohapatra said that the government is developing a technology-based single window, where investors can not only get all information on land, procedures, requirements and forms, they can also create a single unified sheet of information, which other ministries can draw from there. This information sheet will be shared with various ministries for various approvals.

"We are not replacing the approvals - because these are necessary approvals - what we are doing is trying to put in place a single IT platform through which all these approvals can be secured at one place," said Mohaptara.

He said that this is a very ambitious, complex and a difficult task that the government has initiated, and they are confident of introducing this platform by middle of April next year.

On the issue of multiple compliances, the DPIIT secretary said that by March the government will come out with a set of changes which will ease the compliance burden for businesses. Elaborating on the steps, Mohapatra said the government plans to reduce the number of annual inspections, and if not reduce, they can be automated and made faceless.

Besides, many renewals (of licenses and approvals) will be either done away with or the period of renewals will be increased.

On the Performance Linked Incentives (PLI) extended to 10 new sectors, the DPIIT Secretary said that government will by April identify all the companies in the respective sectors to be given the benefit of the scheme.

Speaking in the same event, Tarun Bajaj, secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, said that the government's new disinvestment strategy is going to be much more ambitious than anticipated. The government intends to only have four-five public sector units (PSUs) in strategically important sectors.

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