Indian industry needs to look beyond just tax concessions to grow and the Government will do what it can to improve the ease of doing business, said Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance, here on Sunday.

"There is a philosophy behind decisions taken by us to improve the ease of doing business. You can't keep asking for tax concessions when the rate of recovery is among the lowest in India, behind Uganda, Kenya and Nepal," said Sinha at a NASSCOM event, in response to an industry demand for greater concessions.

The Minister pointed out that where India had not been at par with global norms, steps had been taken to bring parity.

"The corporate tax rate was higher than ASEAN standards, we've taken the step to bring it down to 25 per cent but you have to do without exemptions. That's the trade off. Tax concessions are not the way forward," Sinha articulated.

"If there are bottlenecks then it's our job to improve the ease of doing business but not merely offer tax concessions," he added.

Stay optimistic

Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, urged Indians to stay optimistic about the future of the domestic IT industry here on Sunday.

"The Budget had a basic philosophy which was equity with growth. We have been arguing for too long as to how the bread should be distributed instead of expanding the basket," he said.

"This government is going to be the most supportive as far as IT and innovation is concerned," Prasad added.

Highlighting the need to promote "electronic manufacturing" to keep the manufacturing process going, the Minister reiterated Jaitley's Budget announcements specific to start-ups and innovation as well as previous steps taken to further the same such as the ₹10,000 crore Electronic Development Fund that was approved by the Cabinet earlier.

"This was our first substantive Budget. India's talent and India's technology is India Tomorrow. This is just the beginning, be optimistic," he concluded. 

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