New Delhi: Rajasthan has become the sixth state in the country to successfully initiate ‘Ease of Doing Business’ reforms set by the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance. Thus, the state has become eligible to raise additional financial resources of Rs 2,731 crore through open market borrowings.
It was issued by the Department of Expenditure on December 24, 2020. Now Rajasthan has become equivalent to five other states namely Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana which have achieved this feat. On completion of the reforms related to ease of doing business, these six states have been allowed an additional credit of Rs 19,459 crore.
Ease of doing business is an important indicator of an investment-friendly environment in the country. Improving ease of doing business will enable rapid future growth of the state’s economy. Therefore, in May 2020, the Government of India decided to approve additional lending permissions to states that introduced reforms to promote ease of doing business. The following are the prescribed improvements in this category:
(i) Completion of the first assessment of ‘District Level Business Improvement Action Plan’
(ii) Elimination of the desirability of renewal of registration certificates / approvals / licenses received by businesses under various Acts.
(iii) Implementation of computerized central surprise inspection system under the Acts in which the allocation of inspectors is done centrally but not assigned to the same inspector in the same unit in subsequent years, the practitioner is provided with a prior inspection notice And the inspection report is uploaded within 48 hours of the inspection.
The Government of India raised the lending limit of the states to 2 percent of their GSDP on 17 May 2020, in view of the resource required to meet the challenges posed by the Kovid-19 epidemic.
Half of this special arrangement was linked to the state-centric reforms by the states. The four people-centric areas identified for the reforms were (a) Implementation of One Nation One Ration Card System, (b) Ease of Doing Business Improvement, (c) Urban Local Bodies / Public Service Service Reforms, and (d) Power Sector Reforms.
As of now, 10 states have implemented the One Nation One Ration Card system, 6 states have implemented ease of doing business and 2 states have implemented local body reforms. The states that have made reforms have so far been allowed additional lending of a total of Rs 50,253 crore.