• Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal soft launched the National Single Window System (NSWS) for businesses.

• Goyal said the single window portal will become a one-stop-shop for investors for approvals and clearances.

What is NSWS?

• The National Single Window System is envisioned to address information asymmetry, duplication of information submitted across platforms and authorities and inefficient tracking of approvals and registration faced by investors. 

• The beta version of the portal is open to all stakeholders and the public.

• The portal currently hosts approvals across 18 central departments and nine  states, and another 14 central departments and five states will be added by end-December. 

• An applicant dashboard would be there on the portal to apply, track and respond to queries.

• The portal would bring transparency, accountability and responsiveness and all information will be available on a single dashboard. 

• The portal will progressively onboard a greater number of approvals and licences, based on user/industry feedback. 

• Though extensive testing by ministries/states is ongoing, and will continue for next three months to stabilise and optimise the platform, it is critical that extensive feedback from the industry users is accommodated to ensure comprehensiveness and high utility for investors and entrepreneurs.

Features of NSWS:

NSWS has been designed keeping the needs of entrepreneurs and investors at the center.

NSWS provides following online services: 

• Know Your Approval (KYA) Service: It generates a list of approvals required by any business to commence operations. It does so by asking the investor a series of dynamic questions about their planned business activities and identifies the applicable approvals based on the responses provided. The questionnaire, simple and user friendly on the surface, has a complex, automated logic built into it to sieve through hundreds of approvals, and shortlists only those relevant to the specific investor or entrepreneur. This service was launched on July 21 with over 500 approvals across 32 central departments and over 2,000 approvals across 14 states. This service is only for guidance purposes and does not constitute any legal advice.

• Common Registration Form: To ensure a single point of submission of information and documents across ministries and states, a unified information capturing system along with a common registration form has been introduced. Information is auto-populated on forms, eliminating the need to fill in the same information again. 

• State Registration Form: Enables investor to have seamless single click access to the respective State Single Window System.

• Applicant Dashboard: Provides a single online interface to apply, track and respond to the queries pertaining to approvals and registrations across ministries and states. 

• Document Repository: An online centralised storage service for investors to enable one-time document submission and use the same across multiple approvals. This eliminates the need to submit documents at multiple portals.

• E-Communication Module: Enables online response to queries and clarification requests related to applications by ministries and states.

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