Rural India, increased expenditure in infrastructure focus area: Arun Jaitley

New York: India has to move forward for development in two directions of increased expenditure in infrastructure and rural India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, underlining that these areas appear to be the "focus area" in the future and will be the direction for the economy.

"Two significant directions which I have followed are increased expenditure in infrastructure and rural india. These are the two areas which were lacking and these appear to be the focus area. That probably will be the direction of the economy," Jaitley said.

"You still require a lot of structural changes and I find that after 1991 the current phase which we are passing through is significantly important in the history of reforms itself," Jaitley said. He said that alot of laws have to changed to ease processes, making the business environment easier, bringing in greater transparency into the system.

"We have changed the arbitration laws, we amended some onerous provisions of the companies act, the bankruptcy law I hope to see over the next few weeks approved. A law that deals with commercial indebtness, I think we are in the final stages of passing it," Jaitley said while addressing Asia society here.

"The GST itself is an example, taking corporate tax down to 25 per cent over the next couple of years is an important change. I think we have all our Hands full, the next couple of years bringing about each one of these structural changes," he added.