Piyush Goyal reviews reforms to simplify clearances for industry, improve ease of doing biz

New Delhi: Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, in a review meeting on reforms in India's trade and commerce administration, has discussed time-bound decision-making, streamlining compliance requirements, simplifying clearances for industry and exploring innovative approaches to improve ease of doing business.

He also deliberated on opportunities to further strengthen export support mechanisms, deepen industry and stakeholder engagement, and promote greater utilisation of free trade agreements (FTAs).

Earlier, Goyal launched the National Strategic Trade Command Centre (NSTCC) at Vanijya Bhawan here, aimed at strengthening the monitoring, analysis and governance of India's international trade ecosystem through integrated data analytics and evidence-based decision-making.

The Command Centre has been conceptualised to provide senior policymakers and government officials with a consolidated view of India's trade performance, export promotion schemes, regulatory approvals, application processing, and operational indicators.

By bringing together information from multiple trade-related systems, the NSTCC seeks to facilitate timely identification of emerging trends, operational bottlenecks and areas requiring policy or administrative intervention, according to an official statement.

Goyal lauded the NSTCC for enabling data-driven, evidence-based trade decisions. While reviewing the SCOMET (Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment and Technologies) dashboard, in particular, he called for regular meetings of the Inter-Ministerial Committee, weekly if required, to clear the backlog of pending applications and ensure that all applications are cleared expeditiously.

The platform enables users to analyse information across multiple levels, including national trade performance, regional authorities, schemes, products, destination markets and individual applications, subject to role-based access permissions.

The NSTCC is designed to support three key dimensions of trade governance, which include providing consolidated visibility into trade trends, application processing, pendency and emerging risks, enabling timely identification and resolution of operational issues.

It will also facilitate monitoring and benchmarking of schemes, processes and regional authorities against defined performance indicators to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. Besides, it will help identify recurring bottlenecks, procedural complexities and emerging trade patterns to support policy simplification, process improvements and targeted trade facilitation measures.

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