Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday highlighted India’s resilience in the midst of the global slowdown and assured foreign investors of a stable policy regime.

He also assured them of further reforms, including the passage of the Constitution Amendment Bill for the Goods and Services Tax and the Insolvency Code in the forthcoming Budget Session.

“We are working on a competitive indirect tax regime... the law has been cleared by one House of Parliament. It has been supported by most political parties and I am sure others will also see reason and the law will become a reality soon,” he said at the inaugural address of the India Investment Summit 2016.

Investors from countries, including the UAE and Singapore, are attending the two-day meet where Union Ministries as well as State governments are highlighting projects for funding.

The Centre is also working to set up the Insolvency Code at the earliest, he said. “It is with the Joint Committee of Parliament, which is endeavouring to give its report in the first week of March and we hope to get the Bill cleared in the coming session of Parliament.”

The Budget Session of Parliament is scheduled to start from February 23.

Inviting foreign sovereign wealth and pension funds to invest in projects in sectors including roads, railways and ports, Jaitley also promised ease of doing business and said the Centre is looking to at a dispute resolution mechanism to ensure that projects do not get held up.

Stressing that reforms are a continuous process and “there is no finishing line”, he said that the NDA government in the last 19 months has tried to restore the credibility of the economy and has ensured that decision-making becomes faster, policy changes and improvements including structural reforms take place.

“We have eased processes. And several conditionalities which made the investment process more difficult, those conditionalities have also been sliced away,” he stressed. Hoping for higher growth once the “house is in order”, the Minister further said that India has a potential to grow at a much faster rate.

“We want rural infrastructure, globally competitive urban infrastructure, buoyant private sector and a banking sector which is extremely strong and has the potential to support growth,” he said.

NIIF applications Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said that the government has received as many as 70 applications for the post of the chief executive officer of the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF).

“We are in the process of selecting CEO of NIIF. We have received 70 applications,” he said at the sidelines of the event.

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