A comparison of the states on crucial parameters that define their competitiveness on the ease of doing business front.

The government, in its Union Budget, had announced that a cess of up to 2% would be levied to fund PM Narendra Modi's pet campaign 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan'.

But, the Indian industry says this is against the PM's claims of ease of doing business in India and also sought clarity on certain issues.

Also, the value and rate is unclear, what the effective rate of tax would be for services that are taxable at an abated rate.

The Centre on Tuesday announced 'Big Bang' Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) reforms, easing norms across 15 sectors including defence, banking, construction, single brand retail, broadcasting and civil aviation. This is aimed at boosting the investment environment and bring in more foreign investments in the country.

For facilitating faster approvals on most of the proposals, the government also raised the threshold limit of approval by Foreign Investment Promotion Board from the earlier Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 5,000 crore.

According to an official release, the crux of these reforms is to further ease, rationalise and simplify the process of foreign investments in the country and to put more and more FDI proposals on automatic route instead of Government route where time and energy of the investors is wasted.

"Real estate laws are mostly state laws and there are lot of legal overlaps here," says Getamber Anand, president, Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Association of India (CREDAI). "In most states, real estate builders are required to get 40-70 approvals before starting a project. These approvals take anywhere between 2 and 4 years to come by," adds Anand, arguing that the whole process of approvals must be made online to reduce corruption and bribery, which is rampant in the business.

The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has received inputs on framing e-commerce guidelines from nearly all states and is drafting a policy that will define the marketplace model to leave no room for misinterpretation, he said. This clarification became critical after Karnataka proposed tax deducted at source (TDS) of 1% as a value added levy on payments made to sellers by e-commerce companies.

With a view to improve the ease of doing business, the Commerce and Industry Ministry is working on a proposal to indicate applicability of FDI policy against each entry in National Industrial Classification (NIC) Code. 

"Under this exercise, codification had been started off with the NIC-2008 code book indicating against each entry as to whether FDI is allowed therein, and if so, it is on automatic or approval route along with para number of FDI policy," it said. 

India's low rank in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Ranking 2016 reflects, inter alia, the difficulties faced in enforcing contracts. The two main areas where the World Bank's report faults India is in the time it takes to resolve a case, and the cost of enforcing a contractual claim. Indeed, the delay and high cost of enforcing claims affect the judicial system across all levels in India, and now needs to be tackled on a war footing. India's low rank for several years now is a reflection of the lack of serious judicial reform by successive governments.

Among the many long term and short term measures necessary for easier enforcement of contracts, the most pressing is the reform of the civil procedural laws. While substantial amendments have been made to parts of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 over the years (most recently in 2002), they cannot be said to have had the intended impact as the world bank rankings. The data from the national judicial Data Grid goes on to validate that.

New Delhi: In addition, Mr. Goyal said, Mr. Kejriwal also promised them that the government was in favour of increasing the number of storage and stocking facilities across the Capital as well as working on a policy to regularise many such warehouses.

“The Chief Minister also asked the traders whether they felt any particular form or paperwork related to their business was proving to be a hindrance to which they responded in the affirmative; Mr. Kejriwal then promised to do away with all unnecessary paperwork,” Mr. Goyal added.