Budget 2023-2024: Govt proposes PAN as common identifier

The government has proposed to use Permanent Account Number(PAN) as common identifier for all business establishments using digital systems of various government agencies. In the Union Budget for FY23, the government introduced this proposal as a move to improve the ease of doing business and also help the regulators to collate and process the data.

For business establishments required to have PAN, which will be used as a common identifier for all Digital Systems of specified government agencies, the finance minister said in her union budget speech. Currently every government portal uses different kind of documents as primary identifier for data. Also, with common identifier, the government bodies will be able to more easily process the data.

Experts say, the common business identifier would further simplify the Know your Customer(KYC) for the financial regulators.


“However the same being linked to pan does create concerns, since we are yet to complete linking of adhaar and pan,” said Moin Ladha, partner, Khaitan & Co. “Further it will be very important that appropriate measures for data and privacy protection are in place,”

The finance minister also proposed to increase the scope of Digi locker allowing the residents to use the digital locker facility for wider array of documents.