Arun Jaitley woos investors with stable tax policy

The minister noted that India’s fundamentals are sound even amid the global turmoil and the Modi government has been working on strengthening real economy by focusing on quick decision making, stable policy regime, predictable taxation system and improving on ease of doing business.

“The last two are work in progress,” said Mr Jaitley at 11th Indo-US Economic Summit, which was organised ahead of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second visit to the US later this month. US ambassador to India Richard Verma was also present.

Mr Jaitley said that the Modi government has tried to resolve the legacy issue on taxes through governmental decisions, legislation or even by accepting judicial mandate.

He said that the government has tried to “put each one of these (taxation) issues to rest so that from the regime, which had earned an adverse reputation... We can evolve into fairest and predictable taxation regime in India”.

“I am quite certain the more India moves in that direction ... (we) will have an economy which is growing much faster than world... It will provide the kind of growth rate which will help eliminate poverty in India,” he said.

Terming these three factors as TEEs, the global brokerage firm said that these could be the key drivers of growth and can contribute 3.6 percentage point to GDP growth annually.

“We forecast India’s potential growth could rise to 8 per cent over the period FY16-20 from 7 per cent in FY12-15, under the new GDP series, based on bottom-up factors and structural reforms,” Goldman Sachs said.

Moreover, in a faster reform scenario, India’s potential growth could rise to 9 per cent over this period due to reforms in labour, infrastructure and education, it said.