Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce & Industry and Textiles has said that a big exercise is being carried out by Central Ministries & States/UTs to reduce compliance burden and the aim of this exercise is to simplify, decriminalise and remove redundant laws.
He was addressing a workshop on National Workshop on Reducing Compliance Burden organised by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).
The Minister also said that measures to reduce compliance burden by simplifying and decriminalising several laws can have a multiplier effect on ease of doing business.
“Reduction of compliance is about trust in every business person and citizen. Once trust is established, it becomes easier to evolve a non-confrontational policy framework. Simplification, elimination of compliances and decriminalisation of certain laws contribute to the larger framework to run businesses. It can also have a transformational impact,” the Minister said.
Anurag Jain, Secretary, DPIIT, said that more than 22,000 compliances have been reduced by Centre as well as states. About 13,000 compliances have been simplified, while more than 1,200 processes have been digitised. During the last few years, the Government also decriminalised 103 offences and removed 327 redundant laws.
To reduce these burdens, every ministry, department and states were asked to conduct a comprehensive review of compliances under their purview to understand their relevance and rationale and undertake a complete process re-engineering to eliminate burdensome compliances.
Some of the iconic reforms implemented by the Centre to ease compliance burden on citizens and businesses are 46 penal provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 and 12 offences under the Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) Act, 2008 decriminalised, through business process re-engineering, States/UTs have reduced time for granting approvals/licenses, eliminated physical touch-points and brought transparency in inspections.
Single window clearances for new investors have reduced the time to start operations across businesses.
On the occasion Piyush Goyal also released the Stakeholders Booklet on Reduction of Compliances.