Despite global headwinds, Jaitley bullish on growth

Thanks to the initiatives take by the NDA government, the Indian economy is set to grow at a healthy rate inspite of the global economic volatility, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

He was speaking here on Friday at the inaugural session of the two-day partnership summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Andhra Pradesh government.

He said JAM (jan dhan accounts, aadhaar cards and mobile phones) would pave the way for financial inclusion, the GST for integrating India into one market and demonetisation for removing black money from the system and integrating the shadow economy with the main economy.

He said that with these steps, India would continue to grow at a healthy rate in future, inspite of the global economic slowdown. He said demonetisation had helped the economy, despite the initial disruption, and it would enable greater revenue flows.

The honest tax payer would be rewarded and the evader would suffer.

Open economy

He said the developed nations were adopting protectionist measures, but India continued to be an open economy, encouraging free trade. He praised the Andhra Pradesh government for its measures in promoting economic growth.

“The State is growing above the double digit and I am sure it will continue to beat the national average by three or four points in the coming years.

“The NDA government has fulfilled all the promises made to the State after bifurcation and we will continue to walk the extra mile in helping the State, as AP had suffered injustice in the process of bifurcation,” he said.

State Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu spoke about the State’s potential and investment opportunities. He said his government would strive to make the State investor-friendly.

CII President Naushad Forbes said India would continue to be one of the top 10 performing economies in the world for the next 25 years, with its consumption-led growth.

He said he had no doubt that Andhra Pradesh would be one of the most important States in the Indian growth story. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, said the construction of Amaravati as a world class city would stimulate the growth of the State.

Make in India

Baba Kalyani, CMD of Bharat Forge Ltd., said his company believed in the Make-in-India campaign and was investing more than ₹3,000 crorein two manufacturing plants in AP — one in Nellore district and the other in Anantapur district.

Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, Union Minister Nirmala Seetharaman, and several others spoke.

GST

PTI reports: He said most contentious issues regarding the Goods and Services Tax (GST) have been sorted out between the Centre and states and the new indirect tax regime is at the final stages of implementation.

Stating that India is largely a tax non-compliant society, he said states and the Central Government struggled with their revenues to run the system which created an unfair enrichment in favour of the evader.

“It also becomes very unfair on the normal taxpayer because what the evader manages to evade is what the compliant has to pay more,” Jaitley said.

As for the implementation of GST, the Finance Minister said new indirect tax regime will make India one single market, eliminate multiple assessments, check evasion and bring more revenues into the system.

“I am glad that almost all state governments have actively co-operated in making this a reality. Most of the contentious issues have been sorted out in the GST Council, a forum where you will see deliberative democracy in action. Those are now at final stages of implementation,” Jaitley said.

The government plans to implement GST, which will subsume excise, service tax, VAT and other local levies, from July 1.