Entire government-to-business interface will become faceless and paperless by mid next year: Neeraj Mittal

The Tamil Nadu government is working on digitising the government-to-business (G2B) interface become fully digital, faceless and paperless by middle of next year, according to a senior state government official.

“We are working towards a single window portal, which is one of the largest digital transformation projects in the government. Right now, we have 36 services in the portal, we will be adding 180 services with that we will completely digitise the G2B interface,” Neeraj Mittal, Managing Director & CEO of Guidance, the Investment promotion agency of government of Tamil Nadu said on Friday.

Addressing a webinar session ‘Reimagining India Creating a new narrative through Southern States’, which is part of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII’s) Rebound South Summit, he pointed out Tamil Nadu has gone only one notch up in the ease of doing business ranking published by the Department for Promotion of Industries and Internal Trade (DPIIT). But, “We are highly satisfied in terms of the outcome. Even during the covid times of April-June, investments to Tamil Nadu stood at about ₹30,664 crore which was the largest in the entire country.”

“Our unemployment rate rose to 49 per cent in April but by June it fell to 8 per cent and that shows how our industries have quickly recovered from the impact of Covid,” he added.

Kerala proactive

K Ellangovan, Principal Secretary, Department of Industries & Commerce, Government of Kerala said the State is proactive in attracting investments.

“Our state planning board has released an annual economic survey which showed manufacturing sector grew by 11.2 per cent last year, which is very significant thing as far as Kerala is concerned,” Ellangovan said, adding, “About one-third of MSMEs in the State have been established in the last four years and there are no notable disruption in functioning factories in the last 3-4 years due to labour issues.”

‘Need southern corridor’

Gunjan Krishna, Commissioner for Industrial Development & Director, Department of Industries & Commerce, Government of Karnataka said the southern states can work together to create corridors for industrial growth.

“With Tamil Nadu we can work together on defence corridors because there’s a lot happening in aerospace and defence in Karnataka, so we can combine forces. With Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, we can work on pharmaceutical and med tech, where Karnataka is also doing very well. There are many areas for mutual cooperation,” she added

AP recovery

JVN Subramanyam, Director of Industries, Commerce & Export Promotion, Government of Andhra Pradesh said the Covid-19 pandemic has given both crises as well as opportunity to reform both for the government and the industries.

“As far as Andhra Pradesh is concerned, post unlock, the recovery has been very fast with most of the industries reopening with graded response and now more than 90 per cent of our MSMEs units as well as large and mega units have started operation expecting a few with working capital and raw material issues,” Subramanyam said.

MSMEs to the fore

Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Department of Industries & Commerce and Information Technology Government of Telangana said, the government has accorded the same amount of importance to start-ups as was given to MSMEs, mid-sized and large companies.

In his opening remarks, B Santhanam, Past Chairman, CII Southern Region & Chairman & MD Saint Gobain India, said the southern states are engines of growth for entire India contributing more than 30 per cent of the country’s GDP.

“It is very important that in the concept of cooperative federalism that the reforms need to be led by the states with active participation and collaboration of the business sector,” Santhanam added.