Announcing the same, Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said, "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."

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

What is NSWS?

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

How this move will help the businesses? 

The biggest benefit of the national single window system (NSWS) is that it will be reducing duplicity of information submission to different ministries, reduce compliance burden, cut gestation period of projects, and promote ease of starting and doing business.

NSWS enables the identification, applying and subsequent tracking of approvals for all integrated states and central departments.

Now, the usage of PAN number 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.

At present, the system accepts applications for 248 government-to-business clearance and approvals from 26 central ministries and departments, including states.

So far 19 states/Union Territories, including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Karnataka, and 27 central government departments are already onboarded the system, which was started in September last year and is under beta testing phase.