The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in partnership with the World Bank Group, released the Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP) 2017 for implementation by States/UTs on 13.04.2017.

The BRAP includes 405 recommendations for reforms on regulatory processes, policies, practices and  procedures spread across 12 reform areas, that is, labour regulation enablers; contract enforcement; registering property; inspection reform enablers; single window system; land availability and allotment; construction permit enablers; environmental registration enablers; obtaining utility permits; paying taxes; access to information and transparency enablers and sector specific reforms spanning the lifecycle of a typical business.

This year there are 103 new set of reforms (out of 405) focusing on central inspection system, online land allotment system, online single window system for granting construction permits, registration under Inter State Migrant Workmen (RE&CS) Act, 1979, approval for boiler manufacturer and boiler erector etc.  BRAP 2017 also includes two new sectors i.e. Healthcare and Hospitality. The last date to implement the reform is 31.10.2017.

DIPP will carry out a comprehensive business-to-government (B2G) feedback exercise this year whereby feedback will be taken from businesses on the quality of implementation of the reforms claimed by the States and UTs. For each State/UT, the scores will be aggregated over all the surveys conducted to yield an overall score for the State/UT.

The feedback scores will be used to generate a ranking of States/UTs in terms of reform implementation. Such a ranking will be different from the last year’s ranking, which was a ranking of de jure reforms (or reforms based on evidence submitted by States).

The online portal shall soon be enabled to allow States/UTs to upload the reforms implemented along with the evidence.

Business reform implementation: new regulatory and inspection measures with state feedback, evidence uploads and ranking mechanism portal. The plan prescribes 405 reform recommendations across twelve areas-labour, contract enforcement, property registration, inspection reform, single window systems, land allotment, construction permits, environmental registration, utility permits, taxation, access to information and sector lifecycle reforms-with 103 newly introduced measures and two new sectors (healthcare and hospitality). States/UTs must implement reforms by the specified deadline and upload evidence to an online portal. Implementation will be monitored through a business to government feedback mechanism whose aggregated scores will generate a ranking of States/UTs reflecting actual reform implementation.