The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has urged the government to take urgent steps to decriminalise provisions in several business-facing laws and Acts to help improve investor confidence and ensure ease of doing business in the true spirit.
For this purpose, it has identified 12 alternative ways and listed them in the apex industry chamber’s compilation — Decriminalisation of Business and Economic Legislation — that was shared with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently.
“A change in the nature of penalty provisions in business and economic laws represents the next stage of reforms in ease of doing business. Divesting criminal penalties from business laws — unless well-defined criminal actions are found — will strengthen confidence among young entrepreneurs and investors in doing business,” Vikram Kirloskar, President, CII, said.
Echoing the principle of establishing trust, the CII has sought intervention from different arms of the government to examine how the current criminal provisions in the laws can be treated as civil offences with penalties.
The CII’s recommendations — which cover 37 laws and Acts ranging from the partnership Act of 1932 to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of 2016 — have said that offences that are of a technical nature or those that do not affect public interest prejudicially should be considered, to be decriminalised.