Making 'Make in AP' a success

The Chief Minister of AP, N Chandrababu Naidu, is fairly determined and is introducing changes to ease the process of doing business and attract huge investments across the globe to ensure sustainable and inclusive growth in the State. There is a flurry of activities like, wooing foreign investors, correcting aberrations in taxation structure and concentrating on infrastructure missions and trying to bring about fairness in system by implementing single window clearance model.

The New Industrial Policy unveiled by the government assures improved infrastructure, good governance and excellent power supply to the developers. Not only this, it will ensure water and road facility to all industries, 100 per cent exemption of stamp duty, special subsidy to SC, ST, BC and women entrepreneurs till 2020 and assure them all clearances within 21 days from the date of application.

Identified thrust areas of the policy are agro & food processing, life sciences (including pharmaceutical, biotechnology & medical equipment), textile & apparel, electronics & IT, aerospace & defense, automobiles & auto components, petroleum, chemicals, (including fertilizers) and petrochemicals, energy, mineral based industry, leather industries. Land shall be allotted on 99-year lease.

During the last few years, the State had fallen off the radar for slowdown of growth with blurred priorities and the neighboring states overtaken us of policy paralysis on the prevailing business regulatory environment.

Even after two decades of economic reforms , we continue to falter on various sub-indices such as starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, paying taxes, enforcing contracts or resolving insolvency. When arriving at the ‘Doing Business’ rankings, the World Bank ranks 11 parameters that impact businesses across various stages of their lifecycle – at start-up, getting a location, getting financing, daily operations and even when things go wrong.

To maintain our growth trajectory & conducive investment climate, AP needs to be a relatively attractive investment destination across each of these parameters. The State Government would need to undertake reforms to help place the state on an equal footing amongst countries having favourable, flexible, liberalised and a transparent business environment.

And the recent signing of an MoU by the AP Government with National University of Singapore(NUS) for cooperation in relation to 'Master plan on Ease of Doing Business in Andhra Pradesh (MEDBAP): Vision 2020’ bodes well.

With this in view, my aim is to identify the improvement areas in various aspects of doing business in the State of Andhra Pradesh after bifurcation, like starting a business, land acquisition, labour, and taxes. Specific recommendations have been identified for each of these areas.

By: Gadagottu Sambasiva Rao