Systems simplicity key to Ease of Doing Business: Commerce Minister & Industry Piyush Goyal

New Delhi, 23 Dec (KNN) Simplicity in the systems, timely delivery of services and ensuring that services reach every section of the society are key to reducing compliance burden, union minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday. 

Goyal who holds the portfolios of commerce and industry, consumer affairs, food and public distribution and of textiles urged the political leadership, bureaucracy and industry leaders to focus their initiatives to reduce compliance burden on principles of simplicity and timely delivery of services as reported by mint. 

The minister was speaking at the ‘national workshop on the next phase of reforms to reduce compliance burden’ organized by the department for promotion of industry and internal trade.

The minister noted that more than 25,000 compliance requirements have been reduced in the previous exercise of the Centre to promote ease of living and ease of doing business.

“Simplicity is extremely important in our world because at the end of the day, we have to look at everything becoming very simple," the minister said, referring to how some of the private railway ticket booking portals have simplified the ticket booking system.

The minister explained that the systems developed in the country should not just be for the tech-savvy sections of society but should reach every citizen. 

Goyal asked policy makers to consider the wide disparity in income, literacy level and the gaps in infrastructure, especially connectivity, while planning the delivery of services, especially if technology is involved.

“Also monitoring has to be simple. If monitoring is too much, then monitoring becomes more cumbersome than the problem itself," the minister explained about the philosophy behind reducing the compliance burden and improving ease of living.

Goyal also emphasized it was important to trust people as trust would mean a lot of reporting requirements could be done by way of self-certification. “You have to trust people and it will simplify a lot of things and make them system driven," the minister said. 

Goyal said that feedback from all stakeholders, especially users, have to be taken into account while designing compliance requirements and that ground realities must always be taken into consideration. He urged policymakers to use crowdsourcing to find out details of the compliances that were proving to be cumbersome and work on rationalizing them.