In an attempt to reclaim the top position in the “Ease of Doing Business” rankings, Gujarat government on Saturday announced that it has reduced the duration for granting licences for new pharmaceutical units by 60 days. The government also announced a reduction in the time taken for granting new permissions and renewing existing ones for the sale of medicines in the state. Speaking at the eighth edition of Pharma Vision 2017 organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in Gandhinagar, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said, “Gujarat wants to progress in the ease-of-doing-business. Any decision should be taken quickly, should be the least complicated and should contain the least paperwork. Today, we reduced the duration for granting licences to new drug manufacturers to 60 days from the earlier 120 days.”

Rupani added, “Similarly, we have also reduced the time taken for renewal of licence for drug manufacturers to 60 days from 180 days. New permission for sale of medicines have also been reduced to 30 days from the earlier 45 days and the renewal of existing permission have been reduced to 30 days from 70.”

GUWAHATI: In a major labour reform, Assam has enacted the Industrial Disputes (Assam Amendment) Bill, 2017, which authorises employers to retrench up to 300 employees without seeking approval of the government. The statement of objects and reasons of the legislation states, “the salient feature of the Act is to amend the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, raising the threshold on number of employees from 100 to 300 to allow retrenchment of employees without seeking prior approval of the government.” The amendment seeks to “achieve the objective of ‘ease of doing business’ and thereby encouraging positive business environment in the state.” 

Assam assembly passed the bill by a voice voteon Thursday. Congress MLA, Sherman Ali Ahmed walked out of the House after his demand for a division on the bill was not allowed. Ahmed had sought an amendment and suggested that instead of increasing the threshold limited it should be reduced to 50. Minister for labour and employment Pallab Lochan Das argued that the bill has not been enacted to facilitate retrenchment of employees, but deals with issue of closure. “Government of India and Assam are taking steps to protect the security of workers.” 

NEW DELHI: Paperless courts may be a reality soon with attempts being made to extend efiling and e-summons facility to all district and subordinate courts in the country where electronic filing of cases and serving of summons through e-mails will be mandatory.

Pilot projects have been initiated by the high courts of Delhi and Bombay at the city civil courts in Mumbai c and the Tis Hazari courts in l Delhi where it will be compulsory for e-filing of cases and r serving of e-summons. So far, in courts across the country, inlcluding the higher judiciary, to follow the archaic process of filing cases through hard copies and serving of summons through process servers--delivery of summons by hand through the court staff. The matter of efiling and e-summons was discussed recently at a meeting convened by the law ministry on the issue of enforcing contracts related to improving India's status in the ease of doing business.

NEW DELHI: The Income Tax Department will focus on widening of tax base and maximise e-assessment to cut down on human interface, according to an official statement. Also, efforts will be made by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to exceed the income tax collection target set for current fiscal by use of big-data analytics, said the statement after the end of the two-day annual retreat of central and state government tax officers. The conference also discussed strategies for widening of tax base, with special focus on verification of data collected during demonetisation and SFT (statement of financial transactions). 

"The CBDT aims to add a sizeable number of new taxpayers in the current fiscal," an official statement said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while inaugurating the Rajaswa Gyan Sangam yesterday, had nudged tax officials to use data analytics to track undeclared wealth and fix clear targets for improving tax administration by 2022. He asked taxmen to clear pendency of cases and create an environment that instills confidence among honest taxpayers and uproots corruption. 

Rajahmundry: As part of the implementation of ‘Ease-of-Doing-Business,’ the AP government is computerizing the legal metrology department on the lines of Maharashtra and Karnataka states to ensure transparency and better services to traders besides earning good revenue to the exchequer by addressing lapses in remittance of various forms of the fee. The primary task of the department is to verify several kinds of weights and measures including the electronic ones being used by various trades in order to calibrate them and issue a verification certificate once in a year.

Normally, electronic weights are verified once for every two years while weights and measures of traditional nature will be verified once a year. Legal metrology inspectors visit the establishments and verify weights and measures and issue a verification certificate. Based on the nature of trade, the trader has to pay the fee and the inspectors issue a receipt. Verification fee ranges from a minimum of Rs 10 to a maximum of Rs 5,000.

NEW DELHI: Keen to reduce inspector raj from movement of India's exports, the customs department is devising a plan that will allow goods to move from factory to ships without any checks.  From October, consignments would not be required to be sealed in the presence of inspectors. Instead they will sport an RFID chip with details of the consignment that can be accessed by a reader.  "Supervised sealing of containers will be discontinued from October," said a government official. Instead, electronic self-sealing with RFID chip will be introduced, the official added. 

Only those consignments with perceived risk will be closely examined.  This would enable cargo to move expeditiously and prevent unnecessary hold ups at ports bringing down transaction cost of exporters and also chances of corruption. The development follows the risk based assessment introduced by the Customs through SWIFT, or Single Window Interface for Facilitating Trade, in April this year. 

The Mumbai civic body recently set up a new six-member environment cell to clear projects ranging from 20,000 sqm to 1.5 lakh sqm. Earlier, such clearances were issued by the central government’s ministry of environment. “The old process was be cumbersome and led to projects being delayed. Now, the Mumbai-based committee can clear the projects falling within a particular range. This initiative was launched in accordance with the central government’s directives,” said a civic official, who did not wish to be identified. According to the new directives, projects in the range of 5,000 sqm to 20,000 sqm will have to submit a self-declaration to a qualified building environment auditor (QBEA).

Proposals for projects in the range of 20,000 sqm to 1.5 lakh sqm will be submitted to the BMC by a QBEA.Projects of more than 1.5 lakh sqm will need clearance from the Centre. Municipal chief Ajoy Mehta passed the order to form the cell on Saturday.

NEW DELHI: Enforcement of contract has emerged a new challenge that the government wants to tackle amid complaints from investors that their concerns on this front have not been addressed. India ranks low on this parameter in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business (EODB) rankings and despite its efforts to address the concerns, much headway has not been made here, unlike in areas such as steps to speed up the process to set up businesses and ease exit rules through the enactment of the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code.

Not surprisingly, the issue was flagged by investors during a meeting with start-ups last week, which was also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The ministry of law and justice has been tasked with the issue of improving enforcement of contracts, something that starts off from bundled with mobile handsets and extends to larger supplies. A task force set up under justice secretary Snehlata Srivastava has already identified the areas that need to be reformed, some of which require legislative changes. But the department of legal affairs is seen to be dithering, sources told TOI.