Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said that the agriculture sector needs a lot of support for the Indian economy to grow at a steady pace.
"There are some of the sectors which we need to very strongly indulge in. There are sectors of the economy, which over the last few years have significantly picked up, and therefore, we have a fairly robust service sector. We have now a manufacturing sector which is itself growing, but agriculture is one sector which certainly needs a lot of support," Arun Jaitley said at the 41st Annual Meeting of Association of Development Financial Institutions in Asia and Pacific (ADFIAP).
He stressed on the fact that the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, through various measures, has tried to improve the life of people in the rural areas.
"Through various instrumentalities we try and keep the funding alive in order to improve the quality of life for people in the rural development sector. It is certainly a very important area where the developmental finance itself is required," he added.
Representatives of 39 countries are present at the ADFIAP to discuss the developmental agenda for the Asia-Pacific region. Arun Jaitley asserted that for all of these emerging economies, sustainable development remains a target to be achieved.
"Sustainable development goals remain a target for all emerging societies itself. Certainly one of the great challenges is poverty alleviation and accompanying it one looks at the important sectors particularly trade, finance, SMEs, and agriculture amongst the other sectors where developmental finance is very evidently itself required," the Finance Minister said.
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He also explained how the new tax system will add to development.
"On direct taxes, the number of people paying taxes now has increased. The quantum of tax paid by them has significantly increased but we are still far away from everybody paying legitimately what they are supposed to pay. That itself goes into the kitty of the national resource which in turn becomes an instrument of developmental finance for the country," he said.
"The new system of indirect tax what we have now adopted being a more efficient system is showing some early signs of adding to the resource of the state and I am sure that as the system progresses, more anti-evasion measures are added to it, its own capacity to improve upon the resource of the state to spend on development itself will increase," he concluded.