Govt working on 1st ever 'cost of regulation' study for states: DPIIT secy

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has completed a first-of-its-kind survey to assess the cost of services in states and union territories (UTs), Industries Minister Rajesh Kumar Singh said on Saturday.

While not a ranking, DPIIT's intent was to enable states and universities to conduct a self-assessment on how the costs of regulation vary among other states and then take their own actions to reduce their regulatory costs.

DPIIT has created a dataset to let states know – without making it a political issue – how some areas may impact them in terms of their 'business-friendly reputation'. Some of the areas include liquidity, construction permits, environmental permits and related fees. No fewer than 13 sectors are involved in the research.

The research is not yet in the public domain.

“…there are huge differences across the country when it comes to these 13 services that we tried to cover, in terms of average costs of regulation. In one state it may be an average of Rs 50 lakhs for access to these 13 services, in another state the average may be as low as Rs 15 lakhs,” Singh said at the 96th Ficci General Assembly.

“We are talking about huge cost of regulation of almost Rs 17,000 crores during that assessment period, which last year was one-and-a-half years,” he said.