GUWAHATI, Sept 2 - Citing a NITI Aayog report on �Ease of Doing Business� which showed the State in poor light, the State Congress today questioned the efficiency of the Sarbananda Sonowal government.
But the Assam government claimed that the joint survey by NITI Aayog-IDFC Institute (Mumbai), the report of which was released on August 28 last, was conducted between April 2015 to April 2016.
Addressing a press conference here, State Congress president Ripun Bora said that according to the survey report, it takes an average 248 days to set up a business in Assam, against the national average of 118 days. In Tamil Nadu it is 63 days and in Andhra Pradesh it is 67 days.
�The power shortage per month in Assam is 156 hours while the national average is 46 hours. The average time taken to get construction permission in Assam is 270 days (national average 112 days) and for labour approval it is 103 days (national average 74 days). This shows the efficiency of the government. It is for anyone to guess how the government will develop the State,� the APCC president said.
An official release of the Assam government, however, claimed that as soon as the new government came to power in May 2016, it passed �The Assam Ease of Doing Business Bill� at its very first Assembly session in June 2016, and �hence the survey report was based on data prior to the implementation of EODB in Assam�.
�The leading business house, Patanjali, got all clearances within six days and the 1000-crore unit started its commercial production in less than 100 days. After EODB started in Assam, the maximum time for getting construction permit in Assam is now reduced to 30 days and the Labour Permits within 15 days. Environment clearance is now given in Assam within a month. Power connection period has now been reduced to 15 days,� the government claimed.
The Ease of Doing Business Portal in Assam, which is a Single Window Clearance System, has been functioning since April 2017.
