As part of its efforts to bring transparency into the procedures for starting a business in India and enhance the ‘ease of doing business’, the Government will examine the possibility of doing away with the requirement for multiple prior permissions and replacing it with a pre-existing regulatory mechanism.

The Budget also proposes to introduce a Public Contracts (Resolution of Disputes) Bill, for swifter and easier resolution of disputes arising in such contracts.

Long process

“If we really want to create jobs, we have to make India an investment destination which permits the start of a business in accordance with publicly stated guidelines and criteria,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in his Budget speech.

It takes 28 days to start a business in India, according to World Bank data, compared with three days in Australia, four in Korea, 11 in Japan and three days in Hong Kong. Even Pakistan and Bangladesh are better than India, with average time required to start a business at 19 days and 20 days, respectively.

Jaitley said that he intended to appoint an expert committee to prepare a draft legislation that would replace the need for multiple prior permissions with a pre-existing regulatory mechanism.

On the issue of dispute resolution, Jaitley said that disputes arising in public contracts take long to resolve, and the process was expensive. “My government proposes to introduce a Public Contracts (Resolution of Disputes) Bill to streamline the institutional arrangements for resolution of such disputes,” he said.

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