Rajasthan has become the 6th state to successfully undertake ‘ease-of-doing-business‘ reforms stipulated by the Department of Expenditure (DoE), Ministry of Finance (MoF). The state is now eligible to mobilise additional financial resources of Rs 2,731 crores through open market borrowings.
Improvements in ease of doing businesses will enable faster future growth of the state’s economy. The Government of India, in May 2020, had decided to link the grant of additional borrowing permissions to states that undertake the reforms to facilitate ease of doing business.
The centre ask for completion of first assessment of ‘district-level business-reform action plan’, elimination of the requirements of renewal of registration certificates/approvals/licences obtained by businesses under various acts and implementation of computerised central random inspection system under the acts wherein allocation of inspectors is done centrally, the same inspector is not assigned to the same unit in subsequent years, prior inspection notice is provided to the business owner, and inspection report is uploaded within 48 hours of inspection.
Given the resource required to meet the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government had enhanced the borrowing limit of the states by 2% of their Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) in May 2020. Half of this special dispensation was linked to undertaking citizen-centric reforms by the states.
The four citizen-centric areas for reforms identified were: implementation of one nation one ration card system, ease-of-doing-business reform, urban local body/utility reforms and power sector reforms.
Rajasthan has now joined the five other states namely, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, who have achieved this feat.
On completion of reforms facilitating ease of doing business, these six states have also been granted additional borrowing permission of Rs 19,459 crore from DoE.
