We will ensure that a conducive, enabling environment is created making 'doing business' in India easy. We will focus on cutting the red tape, simplifying the procedures and removing the bottlenecks… Our attempt will be to move towards a single-window system of clearances.

The 2014 manifesto's ease-of-business commitments are process promises, which makes them harder to fake and harder to measure. It undertakes to "ensure that a conducive, enabling environment is created making 'doing business' in India easy", to "focus on cutting the red tape, simplifying the procedures and removing the bottlenecks", and to "move towards a single-window system of clearances both at the centre and also at the State level."

Grading India's whole business environment is not something an audit can do. But one federal clearance channel was designed from the outset as exactly what the manifesto describes — a single window. Under the Project Imports Scheme, every item of machinery and every component for a new industrial plant or a substantial expansion is classified under one tariff heading and assessed at one concessional rate, "to achieve the objective of smooth and quick assessment of imports by providing for a simplified process of classification and valuation." If simplification works anywhere in Indian customs, it should work here.

The CAG's performance audit of the scheme, tabled on 12 August 2026 and covering 2019-20 to 2023-24, found it not working. On the core promise of speed: "Audit observed substantial delays in the clearance of goods under the Project Import (PI) Scheme, which is contrary to the objective of procedural simplification and expeditious cargo movement. Such delays (ranging from 3 to 1,149 days) point to inefficiencies in coordination, document processing and system-level approvals." The audit itself ties this to the manifesto's own language, noting the delays "undermine the targets envisaged under the National Trade Facilitation Action Plan (NTFAP), thereby affecting the ease of doing business."

Part of the reason is that nothing in the rules requires anyone to move. "The Project Import Regulations (PIR), 1986 do not prescribe specific timelines for registration of projects or for completion of imports under registered contracts", which the audit says weakens control over compliance and may lead to "duty evasion, not accounting of goods, and loss of revenue".

Simplification also worked in the wrong direction at the closing end. In "57 cases across eight Commissionerates, contracts were finalised without obtaining mandatory Installation Certificates, conducting the prescribed Plant Site Verification (PSV)" and without reconciliation statements, bills of entry, invoices or final payment certificates — 57 of the 383 finalised cases examined. Bills of entry were in places finalised before the project contract was closed at all, which the audit reads as "weak internal controls and lack of coordination between the assessing and project monitoring sections". Bank guarantees and bonds went unrenewed while finalisation was still pending, and confirmed demands went unrecovered long enough that "expiry of limitation periods or not traceable of importers" becomes a risk.

Eligibility was loose too: concessional treatment was extended "to not notified projects and ineligible machinery/goods", which the audit attributes to deficient verification at the assessment stage. Across 36 observations the audit puts the revenue implication at ₹128.58 crore and procedural irregularities at ₹2,979.33 crore.

One constraint on the audit deserves recording. Of 915 sampled registrations, "139 cases involving a CIF value of ₹15,818.11 crore pertaining to nine Commissionerates were not made available to Audit."

A closing observation from the report cuts both ways. New registrations under the scheme fell 78.10 per cent over the five years and their value 77.45 per cent — because duty rates elsewhere came down, making the concession less necessary. Simplification through lower general tariffs, in other words, did more for these importers than the dedicated single window did.

The promise was to cut red tape and move towards single-window clearance. On the single window that already existed, the audited record is delays of up to three years, no deadlines in the rules, and contracts closed without the checks the rules require. Our verdict is lacks context.