By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, July 1, 2022: The mineral rich Odisha has lifted itself from being one of the bottom-ranked states in the last Ease of Doing Business ranking, has now been marked as an ‘Achiever’ along with some of the industrially developed states like Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

This was revealed in the Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP) 2020 assessment report of the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT), under the Union ministry of commerce, released on Thursday.

The report is a boost to the state and comes a day after chief minister Naveen Patnaik held his first overseas investors’ meet in Dubai to showcase Odisha’s business ecosystem and manufacturing prowess and invited investors from the region to invest here. The state also received investment intents of more than Rs 21,000 crore from the meet.

Odisha had got 29th rank (placed among the bottom states) in the Ease of Doing Business ranking as per the previous BRAP evaluation report, released in September 2020. “Odisha has shown remarkable progress in the current cycle by implementing over 90% of the 301 reforms suggested by DPIIT and achieving more than 80% positive user feedback,” said state industries secretary Hemant Sharma.

Other states in the achiever category include Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. States like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Telangana have been categorized as ‘Top Achievers’ in the ranking.
The reforms covered 15 business regulatory areas such as access to information, single window system, labour, environment, land administration and transfer of land and property, utility permits and others, said official sources.

The major reforms carried out by the state include setting up the new par-e-shram portal, a one-stop-shop for all services being provided by the labour department. Also, the state has introduced auto-renewal through online payment and elimination of renewal of as many as eight businesses to government services, digitization of land records, online systems for drug licences, environmental clearances and digitization of excise services.