Budget FY23: Next phase of Ease of Doing Business, Ease of Living to be launched

New Delhi, Feb 1:  The Central government plans to launch the next phase of 'Ease of Doing Business' as well as 'Ease of Living', Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday.

In her Budget speech to Parliament, the Finance Minister stated: "For the 'Amrit Kaal', the next phase of Ease of Doing Business, EODB 2.0 and Ease of Living, will be launched."

"In our endeavour to improve productive efficiency of capital and human resources, we will follow the idea of 'trust-based governance'."

According to Sitharaman, the new phases will be guided by an active involvement of the states, digitisation of manual processes and interventions, integration of the central and state-level systems through I-T bridges, a single point access for all citizen-centric services, and a standardisation and removal of overlapping compliances.

"Crowdsourcing of suggestions and ground level assessment of the impact with active involvement of citizens and businesses will be encouraged."

Besides, the Finance Minister stated that as a result of our government's strong commitment for 'minimum government and maximum governance' over 25,000 compliances were reduced and 1,486 Union laws were repealed in recent years.

This, she stated, is the outcome of the government's trust in the public along with measures such as 'Ease of Doing Business' (EODB).

Besides, she proposed to expand the scope of the single window portal -- Parivesh -- for all green clearances.

"The scope of this portal will now be expanded, to provide information to the applicants. Based on location of units, information about specific approvals will be provided," she said.

"It will enable application for all four approvals through a single form, and tracking of the process through 'Centralized Processing Centre-Green' (CPC-Green)."

The portal was launched in 2018 to reduce the time required for green approvals. Furthermore, Finance Minister proposed that states will be encouraged to adopt 'Unique Land Parcel Identification Number' to facilitate IT-based management of land records as efficient use of land resources is a strong imperative.

The facility for transliteration of land records across any of the 'Schedule VIII' languages will also be rolled out. In addition, she proposed a completely paperless, end-to-end online 'e-Bill System' to be launched for use by all Central ministries for their procurements.

The system is expected to enable the suppliers and contractors to submit online their digitally signed bills and claims and track their status from anywhere.