National Workshop on Building Synergies: Matching Business Reforms to Improved "Ease of Doing Business"

This workshop held in New Delhi is part of NCAER Study on Matching Business Reforms in India’s States to the ‘Ease of Doing Business’, funded by prosperity fund, British High Commission, BHC.

The opening address welcoming delegates and providing an overview of the project was delivered by Dr Shekhar Shah, Director General NCAER. An introduction to the BHC perspective on EoDB was delivered by Mr Aurodeep Nandi, Deputy Head of Economics, Ease of Doing Business Lead. An introduction to the study was presented by Dr Anushree Sinha, Senior Fellow at NCAER.

The first session in this National Workshop was a Country Expert Panel, chaired by Mr Suman Berry and speakers included Dr Sher Verick, Deputy Director, ILO and Professor Shreekant Gupta, Delhi School of Economics. The third session was on Industry perspective and was chaired by Professor Santosh Mehrotra, JNU and was moderated by Aurodeep Nandi. Dr Sanjeevan Bajaj, Adviser, FICCI Quality Fourm, Ms Vanitha Datla, Deputy Chairwoman, Indian Women Network & Vice-Chairperson, Elico Ltd, Hyderabad, Mr Richard McCallum, Managing Director, UK India Business Council, Mr Amol Kulkarni, Sr. Policy Analyst, CUTS International, Jaipur and Mr Manish Mishra, Chief Regulatory Affairs, Tata Steel were the speakers for this session.

The aim of NCAER’s ‘Building Synergies’ initiative is to evaluate business regulations in India, matching DIPP’s business reform plan with actual conditions on the ground. The special focus of the study is on reforms in tax policy and administration, construction permits, and regulatory and inspection reforms. For this, NCAER conducted an extensive survey of 600 firms and state government officials across 12 selected states to gauge the effectiveness of business reforms. The findings are expected to provide policy makers and investors real time feedback on the implementation of business reforms across the focused states.

The last session in this workshop was chaired by Prof Shreekant Gupta in which NCAER presented its findings from the survey of all the 12 states. The study methodology was presented by Dr A C Kulshreshtha and Dr Rajesh Jaiswal. Dr Anushree Sinha presented the state level findings and Dr Pallavi Choudhuri presented the industry level findings. In his talk, Professor Shreekant Gupta lauded the rigour and depth of the NCAER study. He also suggested that such a study should to be repeated every year to understand the evolving situation on ground on EoDB. Dr Rajesh Chadha’s concluding remarks included a mention of the proactive engagement of India and UK in the field of research.

This workshop was the last in the series of three workshops aimed at building engagement with the government, industrialists, industry experts, UK business experts, academia, multilaterals and other stakeholders. The first regional workshop held on 14 December, 2016 at the NCAER focused on the states of Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Tripura. The second regional workshop held on January 17, 2017 at Institute of Public Enterprise (IPE), Hyderabad focused on Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, and Karnataka. The last and National Workshop provided results from all the 12 states and included participants from all the focused states.