Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana are the top achievers based on implementation of Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP), the news release published by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry on Thursday said.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the assessment of states/UTs under BRAP 2020, the 5th edition of the exercise in New Delhi on Thursday. Union Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal was also present in the ceremony.
According to the release, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh figure under the achievers category. While Assam, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Jharkhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, and West Bengal have been placed in the aspirers category,
Andaman & Nicobar, Bihar, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Puducherry, and Tripura have been clubbed under the Emerging Business Ecosystems category.
Sitharaman said that the nature of reforms had undergone change since 1991. “The reforms now taking place are responsive reforms. Unlike the reforms of 1991, which were given to us for implementation, there is no compulsion now. The objective is to see what will bring out improvement in systems and ensure better lives for us. An element of nudge has been brought into every layer of the government. Nudging cannot be by the government only and the industry has a big role to play there,’ she said. Sitharaman appreciated the changes brought in the assessment framework of implementation under the BRAP over years.
Goyal said that the assessment has evolved from evidence-based to 100 per cent feedback in multilingual format.
He said that the purpose of this BRAP exercise is to infuse a culture of learning from each other’s best practices and improve upon the business climate in each State/UT with a unified objective for India to emerge as a most favoured Investment Destination across the globe. “When Prime Minister gave the thrust in 2014 to improving the ease of doing business, one of his major thrust areas was that while we are working at the international level for improving our ranking, we must involve all the stakeholders including the states and UTs in our effort to get them on board so that people really feel the difference and change in their ecosystem, which will lead to ease of living,” Goyal said.
The BRAP 2020 includes 301 reform points covering 15 business regulatory areas such as access to information, single window system, labour, environment, land administration and transfer of land and property, utility permits, and others. A total of 118 new reforms were included to further augment the reform process.
Sectoral reforms with 72 action points spread across nine sectors namely trade licence, health care, legal metrology, cinema halls, hospitality, fire NOC, telecom, movie shooting, and tourism were introduced for the first time to expand the scope of reform agenda.
The release mentioned that DPIIT since 2014 has been assessing states/UTs based on their performance in implementation of prescribed reforms in BRAP exercise. To date, assessment of states/UTs have been released for 2015, 2016, 2017-18, and 2019.