Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal, said on Tuesday that the soft launch of the first phase of the National Single Window System would take place soon. The digital platform is aimed at allowing investors to identify and apply for various pre-operation approvals required for commencing business in India. 

There will be 17 ministries or departments and 14 states onboard in the first phase, which is likely to be launched soon, the minister said during the review meeting of the single window system held on Tuesday, said an official statement. Goyal hoped that it will be a seamless interface where all the facilities, from land purchasing to all the information needed by businesses and industrialists, will be available. He said the single window would be a genuine one, acting as a one-stop solution to all the problems or requirements of the investors.

This would provide end-to-end facilitation and support, including pre-investment advisory, information related to land banks and facilitating clearances at Union and state levels, Goyal added. The minister also emphasised on the security and the authentication of the critical data used on this platform. He said all security measures should be in place to safeguard critical data. Goyal also suggested third party auditing of the platform before its launch. 

The participants in the meeting gave status report on their preparedness on being on board of the portal. They were told to register on the portal, try out the various used cases and identify the areas for improvement.

In July last year, Piyush Goyal had said in an interaction with sovereign wealth funds, foreign pension funds and others on ease of doing business and investments in infrastructure sector in India, that the Union government was looking at launching a single window system.

At the time, according to a ministry statement, Goyal said that the potential investors would then be able to locate and identify the land banks from their distant offices and finalise the location of industries, without frequently visiting the offices of land-owning agencies.Furthermore, Goyal said the government had initially identified 12 industrial sectors to focus upon, and the same has been expanded to 20.