"INDIA'S REFORM AGENDA WILL ENSURE ITS PLACE IN GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS"

In a conversation with BW Businessworld, Manmeet Nanda, Joint Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, talks about the various initiatives of DPIIT to reduce the cost of regulation, their impact on supply chains and how these initiatives are addressing challenges on the ground

- Arjun Yadav

While India has seen success in the Ease of Doing Business in the last decade but on the ground, it is often said that it is not felt. What are your plans to take it forward? 

India has been making a lot of strides in Ease of Doing Business since 2014, when the reform agenda was set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At that time, it was completely unheard of that India in the next four to five years of the ‘Doing Business Report’ would have scored anywhere and be one of the highest performing nations in the world. We were in the top bracket, all those five years in terms of improving our performance, and that jump of 79 positions we see today is because of the concerted efforts that the government put towards the reform agenda.

Since then, lot of things have happened in the reform ecosystem. The Government of India (GoI) and the DPIIT, understood that merely business reforms, as mandated by the World Bank were not enough. So, we created something unique, the Business Reform Action Plan that was rolled out from 2015 onwards. We are in our sixth edition now and the Business Reform Action Plan looks at simple reforms that are required for both big and large businesses, and small steps that the state governments and central ministries could take to improve the business ecosystems.

Though substantial work has been done so far, a lot still needs to be done. During our interactions with various stakeholders, industry associations, we often hear about the requirement to reduce the cost of doing business. And I think our next agenda of the reform ecosystem is directed towards that and we believe that is the right step now.