Government's ambitious Corporate Data Management project to begin next fiscal

NEW DELHI: The Corporate Affairs Ministry will start next fiscal a scheme to disseminate authentic and error-free data about companies in a user-friendly manner.

In a major fillip to the Ministry, the proposed Corporate Data Management (CDM) scheme has been classified as a central sector plan project and the Union Budget 2015-16 has allocated Rs 5 crore towards it.

Once implemented, the scheme would help provide various entities, including regulators, with authentic data about corporates registered in the country.

At the end of December 2014, there were more than 10 lakh active companies.

Information available in the Ministry's key platform -- MCA 21 -- that is used by registered companies to submit their filings would be used for the scheme.

The CDM scheme seeks to create an in-house data mining and analytics facility in the Ministry to effectively utilise the vast repository of information filed in its corporate registry, the Budget said.

"In addition to providing authentic and clean data to all stakeholders in a more accessible manner, the facility aims at making available the information in an organised and structured manner to the Ministry and to other policy and decision making agencies within and outside the government," it added.

Earlier, a Ministry official had said the scheme is aimed at putting the "entire shareable information about companies into the public domain after transforming statutory information into statistical database".

Available corporate data would be broadly segregated on the basis of financial and non-financial aspects.

There were over 14.39 lakh companies registered under the Companies Act as on December 31 last year but only little more than 10 lakh were active.

The Companies Act is implemented by the Corporate Affairs Ministry.