Two clear themes emerged listening to the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley delivering the Budget 2015 speech. One is building roadmaps to bring a large portion of Indian economy into the financial mainstream. The second is enhancing the institutional frameworks that will help business create economic value with greater ease. India is finally at a place where we have a strategy to bring each and every Indian into the financial mainstream. Streamlining subsidy transfer using Aadhar was the first significant step in that direction. .

Direct subsidy transfer to Aadhar linked accounts will avoid leakage. It will also help the Government create social security projects. Another major step in this direction is using the post office network as payment banks. .

This will allow an immediate roll-out of a very large banking network in our country. It will also allow enablers including organisations like ours to create more value.The RBI is in process of issuing payment banks and our company, Paytm, is an applicant. Government’s attention has correctly moved towards building finance infrastructure for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME). Creation of MUDRA Bank with ₹20,000 crore is a step that was long due. MSME create more than 150 million jobs in our country, but still get less than 5 per cent of loans disbursed by banks. .

Increasing service tax to 14 per cent seems like a weak step. At the same time, it seems to be in sync with the long-term goal of creating more streamlined value per transaction in the economy. This will help in moving the needle on tax collection at the transaction stage. With the right enforcement, this is a huge step in cracking down on the black economy.

The writer is the Founder of Paytm

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