Avacom-Labour

India's Regulatory Environment is Fluid

Until 2014, at rank 142 India was in the bottom quadrant of the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Rankings. India’s regulatory universe is highly complex. Business grapple with a universe of over 1,536 Acts, 69,233 Compliances and 6,618 Filings. It is also extremely fluid, changing over 3,000 times a year. Identifying the regulations to a business and then keeping them updated with frequent changes makes for a heavy compliance burden.

The global trend towards better corporate governance has echoed in India as well. There are greater scrutinies and higher penalties. The traditional model of compliance management through manual tracking has become a key constraint, leading to increased sins of omission (missed compliances) and sins of commission (incorrect compliances). Central, State and Local Governments publish thousands of regulatory changes on their own websites. There is no central repository for all the updates. It is left to the Compliance officers to know these websites, visit them periodically, find an update, interpret it and take necessary action. Compliance Officers need Timely, Accurate and Personalised Compliance Updates to ensure that the organisation stays Compliant.