Steps taken by states to ease regulatory and compliance burden are welcome
A report in this paper has pointed towards states undertaking several small reforms to give a fillip to businesses. The Rajasthan government has, for instance, eased restrictions, allowing women to work in commercial establishments during night hours. Delhi has recently done away with the requirement for restaurants and hotels to seek police certificates and licences. Tamil Nadu has expanded the number of industries in the 'white category', which exempts them from taking consent from the state pollution board. Alongside such steps, at the level of the central government, the Deregulation Cell in the Cabinet Secretariat is looking at national regulations. These are welcome measures. But much more needs to be done and quickly.
There are several areas such as land, labour, utilities and logistics where regulations need to be streamlined and the compliance burden eased. A report from Teamlease earlier this year titled 'Compliance 3.0', had, for instance, noted that businesses in India are 'governed by 1,536 acts and rules, 69,233 compliances and 6,618 filings'. Though there may have been some improvement in the situation, those figures nonetheless indicate the scale and extent of the challenge of regulation. The compliance burden, the report had pointed out, tends to increase as a company grows, forcing firms to remain small. In the case of land, another contentious area, a study quoted in the Economic Survey 2024-25, titled, 'State of Regulation: Building standards reforms for jobs and growth', notes that factories in India lose a significant portion of land to building standards. These regulations lead to the locking up of productive land and reduce opportunities to create jobs. Several of these areas lie under the ambit of state governments, making them critical to easing the regulatory burden. The Economic Survey had argued that 'complementing the efforts of the Centre, states must pursue systematic deregulation as a policy priority'. A careful analysis of the costs and benefits of regulations needs to be undertaken. Greater economic freedom must be provided to agents in the country. As the Survey noted, 'strategic and systematic deregulation can catalyse growth, innovation, and competitiveness'.
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India.com
7 hours ago
- India.com
Why is the address of PMO changing after 78 years? What is the 'big' reason behind leaving South Block?
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Indian Express
13 hours ago
- Indian Express
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'The rating of India did not capture India's fundamentals for almost a decade,' Soumya Kanti Ghosh, State Bank of India's Group Chief Economic Adviser, said in a note on August 14. So, what has convinced S&P that now is a good time for India to be given an upgrade? Steady economic improvement The primary reason is clarity on the government's finances. While the Centre has had a law called the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act since 2003 — it demands reducing the annual fiscal deficit to 3 per cent of GDP — it has rarely been met. In fact, only once since the Act's enactment has the Centre's fiscal deficit fallen below 3 per cent, in 2007-08, and that was primarily due to some financial jugglery. It was in January 2007 that S&P had last upgraded its rating on India. However, post the coronavirus pandemic, the fiscal deficit has been reduced aggressively from 9.2 per cent in 2020-21 to a targeted 4.4 per cent in 2025-26. Going forward, the Centre will start targeting a reduction in its debt-to-GDP from 57.1 per cent in 2024-25 to 49-51 per cent by 2030-31. Then there is growth. Despite GDP growth falling to a four-year low of 6.5 per cent in 2024-25, India remains one of the fastest growing large economies in the world — or in S&P's words, 'among the best performing economies in the world'. And this is real, or inflation-adjusted, growth; nominal growth — which is the actual increase in the GDP in today's prices — is even higher. When it comes to calculating the debt-to-GDP ratio, it is the nominal GDP that matters. As such, as long as nominal GDP growth is higher than the pace with which the debt is increasing, the debt-to-GDP ratio will keep falling. Another key factor has been the fairly low and stable domestic inflation, with S&P praising the Reserve Bank of India's inflation management record. 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Helpfully, S&P said on August 14 that it may further raise India's rating if the fiscal deficit of the Centre and states falls below 6 per cent of GDP on a structural basis. This, however, is a 'tough ask', according to Arora of Emkay Global. S&P itself expects the combined fiscal deficit to decline only to 6.6 per cent in 2028-29 from 7.8 per cent in 2024-25.
NDTV
18 hours ago
- NDTV
78 Years After 1947, PMO To Leave South Block For New Central Vista Address
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