Nirmala Sitharaman launches Mobile Apps for 'corporate and investor-friendly' ecosystem

"Digital India is a campaign launched by the Government of India in order to ensure that the government's services are made available to citizens electronically by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology. These two initiatives would create a new corporate and investor friendly ecosystem," Sitharaman said, launching the Mobile Apps.

The minister also said that the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has been engaged in a continuous journey of digitisation, automation and improvement, for the good of the society, the corporates, the economy and the professionals.

"Going forward, MCA would bring in more tech-enabled services for ease of doing business and ease of living for the people," she said.

Sitharaman said that MCA being one of the key primary sources of corporate data, is required to ensure that the data quality is uncompromised and free from flaws.

With this objective in mind, the ministry has established a Central Scrutiny Centre, which will primarily scrutinize the filings made by the users under straight through processes, identify the data quality issues and irregularities, communicate the same to the concerned Registrar of Companies so that corrective steps can be taken to restore authenticity and correctness of data and it can be seamless shared with other regulators, if required.

She said that the Centre will scrutinize certain Straight Through Process (STP) Forms filed by the corporates on the MCA21 registry and flag the companies for more in-depth scrutiny.

The Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority's Mobile App, the minister said, will have the facility of tracking the status and progress of the IEPF claim refund process. Moreover, it also provides a mechanism for investors and common citizens to report on the suspected fraudulent schemes.

Currently, the app is available on Android based devices and can be downloaded from PlayStore.

The Mobile App has been developed for citizen engagement and information dissemination to promote awareness among investors. With this App, the Authority aims to achieve the goal of financial literacy, spreading investors’ awareness, education, and protection among investors both in rural and urban areas.

"The Mobile App aims at achieving the goal of financial literacy, spreading investors’ awareness, education, and protection among investors. Our prime goal here is to push Ease of Living." Sitharaman said.

She further said that the multiple initiatives taken by the MCA in past couple of years to promote Ease of Doing Business in India. The increase in number of incorporation of companies in India even during the COVID-19 pandemic is the result of initiatives like introduction of integrated form SPICe+ & Agile Pro for incorporation of Companies, which has provided one stop solutions to promoters desirous of setting up a business entity in India.

This year till February 2021, about 1.38 lakh companies have been incorporated as compared to about 1.16 lakhs companies in the corresponding period of last year by Central Registration Centre, an increase of over 17 per cent, she added.
UNI SRJ