India launches G2B portal for industry promotion

The union ministry of commerce and industry today launched a government-to-business (G2B) e-biz platform that offers two of its services and an integrated payment gateway to facilitate its industrial promotion activities.

The e-biz portal, launched by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), is one of the integrated mission mode projects under the government's National e-governance plan.

The platform will provide efficient, convenient, transparent and integrated electronic services to investors, industries and businesses in the areas of information on forms and procedures, licences, permits, registrations, approvals, clearances, permissions, reporting, filing, payments and compliances throughout the life-cycle of an industry or business entity.

The commerce ministry had earlier, on 23 January 2013, launched an e-biz portal comprising information on forms and procedures for industrial entrepreneurs, at the CII Partnership Summit in Agra.

The second phase of the project, which is being carried out now, offers two DIPP services, viz, industrial licences and industrial entrepreneur's memorandum (IEM) and the integrated payment gateway with the Central Bank of India.

The e-biz portal will allow the user to fill the e-forms – both online as well as offline - upload the attachments, make payment online and submit the form for processing by the department. The user will be provided with copy of a challan, which can be saved or printed, as well as an acknowledgement of submission and tracking of status of the form besides receiving SMS alerts on important notifications.

The certificate/ approval/ clearance/ permit etc can be finally downloaded from e-biz. The e-biz platform, as it evolves, will enable a transformational shift in the governments' service delivery approach from being department-centric to customer-centric.

''We are firmly committed to wide-ranging initiatives aimed at fostering the business environment in the country in a holistic manner. Our approach includes leveraging technology to bring transparency, improve efficiency and promote convenience,'' said commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma.

Infosys, the country's second-largest information technology provider, is partnering in the project, he said, adding this wold become a benchmark for successful public partnerships in the country.

The first of its kind project to be implemented in the country, the e-biz project will brings a horizontal integration across various verticals of the central government, state governments and para-statal agencies.

The integrated payment gateway, which is also the first of its kind in the country, essentially solves the problem of debiting from multiple sources and crediting to multiple sources in a completely automated manner based on a set of external messages, he said, adding that such a gateway can serve as the universal gateway for all e-governance applications.

The e-biz platform is now in public domain and will allow the addition of more and more services across central and state governments and para-statal bodies, Sharma added.

The government-to-business (G2B) portal, conceptualised with support from the National Institute of Smart Government (NISG) as the consulting partner and developed by Infosys Ltd, Bangalore in a public-private partnership (PPP) model, will be implemented over a period of 10 years.

The first three years of the term would be the pilot phase, while the remaining 7 years will be the expansion phase.

During the pilot phase, a total of 50 (26 central + 24 state) services are being implemented across five states, viz, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra and Tamilnadu. This phase will also include the launch of a single window system for Andhra Pradesh.

Further, over the course of the second and third years, five additional states, viz, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, will be brought under the ambit of this project.

Over the next 10 years, the project envisages addition of more than 200 services related to investors and businesses across the country.