In a bid to make business approvals easier in the country and smoothen business activities, the Central government introduced the National Single Window System in September. A year after the process and implementation, Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday that the government is planning to make Permanent Account Number PAN as the unique identifier to enter the national single window system NSWS. The NSWS can be described as a one-stop platform for businessmen seeking regulatory approvals and services related to investments. The platform would help businesses with the ability to apply for necessary approvals to start or run their businesses.
The digital platform has applications from 26 Central Departments and 16 State Governments that have received various approvals. Since its launch, 27 central government departments and 19 States Union Territories, including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, have been integrated into the National Single Window System. Five more states and union territories, including Haryana, Andaman and Nicobar, Tripura, Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh, will be integrated under it by December 15.
The NSWS system is currently under the beta testing phase and is looking at as the first big step towards digitisation of trade.
The Centre is planning to allow businesses to use the Permanent Account Number PAN as a unique identifier to apply on the platform to get different clearances and approvals from central and state departments.
Piyush Goyal, Union Commerce Minister, said we are beta-testing the National Single Window System and we are interested in the relevance and importance of the NSWS. In this testing phase, we received 76,000 applications. The minister said that different ministries are working together to use one of the existing databases as the single-entry point, most likely that will be the PAN. Goyal said that PAN entry will prevent duplication, help auto populate other application forms that are received on the system, and speed up the approval process. He said that a lot of the basic data about the company, its directors, addresses, and a lot of common data is already available on the PAN database.
He said technical glitches were as low as 514 and that there is 99.32 per cent efficiency in the system. 48,000 approvals have been generated from this system so far. A large number of departments and states have been on board. Goyal said on Monday that we received invaluable suggestions from stakeholders.