PAN To Become Single ID For Seeking Approvals For Business. What It Means For Entrepreneurs

With the new move from the Centre, the usage of PAN will help auto-populate other application forms that will be received in the system and will help speed up the approval process and encourage more companies to apply on the system.

New Delhi: The Permanent Account Number (PAN) will soon become the only identification for seeking different clearances and approvals from the central and state departments for business. Giving details, Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said the government is considering the use of Permanent Account Number or PAN as a single-point identifier to facilitate expeditious regulatory approvals to new investment proposals under the single window.

He also said the Centre is planning to allow businesses to use the PAN instead of other data as a unique identifier for entering into national single window system (NSWS) for such approvals.

“We are moving towards using one of the existing databases as the entry point, which is already available with the government…and most probably that will be the PAN number. So with the PAN, a lot of the basic data about the company, its directors, addresses, and a lot of common data is already available in the PAN database,” Goyal said.

As per the plan, the PAN will be used as a unique identifier for API integration of data between ministries and states for ensuring a unique business user ID.

At present, more than 13 different business IDs like EPFO, ESIC, GSTN, TIN, TAN and PAN, are in use for similar jobs.

What is NSWS?

It should be noted that the NSWS is an ambitious initiative that promises to be the game-changer for increasing investments and reducing the compliance burden in the country. This would lead to convergence of all Ministries/ Department and States/ UTs through the “whole of Government approach”.

How New Move To Help Entrepreneurs?

The national single window system (NSWS) will reduce duplicity of information submission to different ministries, reduce compliance burden, cut gestation period of projects, and promote ease of starting and doing business.

The NSWS will also enable the identification, applying and subsequent tracking of approvals for all integrated states and central departments.

With the new move, the usage of PAN will help auto-populate other application forms that will be received in the system and will help speed up the approval process and encourage more companies to apply on the system.