Need to cut red tape for higher ease of business ranking: Arun Jaitley

The Finance Minister also said that the Customs department has a significant role to play in the area of trading across borders, which had lagged behind last year along with areas of municipal permission of land and buildings and contract enforcement in the Ease of Doing Business ranking last year.

“Each one of these has a number of minute details which we need to satisfy and most of those are not very difficult to satisfy…the CBEC and the officers are substantially concerned with the ‘trading across borders’. How do we cut down the costs, how do we cut down red tapism, how do we cut down the time taken, how do we improve our efficiency at ports, airports, land borders. DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion) is working on each of these details with each one of us. If we hit the bull’s eye on each of these three, then to come down substantially below 100 (ranking) is reasonably possible. And, in one of them customs department has a very significant role,” he said.

Jaitley also said that the Customs department has the challenge of enacting the twin roles of a facilitator as well as be sharp at detection of tax evasion with use of technology. “You have a twin role to play that whereas you have to have the detection machinery in place so as to ensure evasion doesn’t take place, at the same time you have to be a facilitator which makes entry into border itself extremely easy. How do you blend these two is somewhat a contradictory challenge and bring the balance between the two. I think it’s the experience of the service which would tell you the best way it is to be done,” he said.

Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia also echoed the finance minister’s appeal to the Customs department to help improve the Ease of Doing Business ranking, saying that the department needs to work harder to ensure that the ranking for ‘trading across borders’ improves from 146 to 100 as early as possible. “In spite of the country moving 30 places in last year, from 130 to 100th place in overall ranking of India, there’s one item…trading across borders in which Customs have got one primary role but there are other departments also which play a role in that. All of us together have to work harder to ensure that our ranking in that particular item, which is 146 as of now, we must make it within 100 as early as possible. If not within a year, but within two years,” Adhia said.

He further said, “I’ll appeal to Customs department officials that let’s take it as a challenge. If we are used to getting so many laurels in terms of GST and other things, why can’t we make this also possible.” In the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business 2018 ranking, India had scored 146 position in trading across borders, 181 in dealing with construction permits, 154 in registering property and 164 in enforcing contracts.