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Market participants, who met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Mumbai on Saturday, sought tax sops on equities investment and steps to revive the primary market. The finance minister had a two-hour long interaction with several Foreign Institutional Investors (FII), domestic brokers and exchanges ahead of the Union Budget to get a sense of market expectations.
Among the important issues discussed were steps needed to spring life into the initial public offering (IPO) market. The financial year 2013-14 was one of the worst-ever for the Indian market with only company coming out with an IPO.
Industry players also asked the finance minister to consider the long-pending demand of rationalisation of the securities transaction tax and also scrapping the commodities transaction tax, which was introduced in last year’s Budget. Among the foreign investors who attended the meeting include JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Nomura and Citi. Also representatives from BSE and NSE were present for the meeting.
The issues of GAAR and overhauling the tax-saving scheme introduced in FY12 were also discussed.
