Govt. to make tax structure non-adversarial, says Jaitley

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said that the government would restore the credibility of decision-making, while easing processes and making India's tax structure non-adversarial.

Speaking at the inaugural session of RBI conference on financial inclusion here, Jaitley reiterated the government's promise to make India more business and investor-friendly.

"We are trying to ensure that as many people, both within and outside, invest in this country. We are trying to restore the credibility of both the Indian economy and the decision making process of the Indian economy," said Jaitley.

"We are trying to ease various procedures and processes. I did not repeat every step that we have taken. We are trying to rationalise our taxation structures, make them more and more non-adversarial," he added.

 

Jaitley further said the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) would bring major changes in the system.

"Make some landmark changes, both in the indirect tax system and also in the direct tax system. Some of these ideas were outlining the budget presented recently. In the coming days, I am looking forward anxiously to one of the most important constitutional amendments with regard to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) being cleared by Indian parliament," he said.

Meanwhile, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan said the country's push to build infrastructure should not come at the expense of financial stability.

"The nation has enormous financing needs in infrastructure and far too many of our banks have already have too much exposure. Big corporate infrastructure players have also taken too much debt. We require national push to finance infrastructure should not override financial stability which is key to national security," said Rajan.

Rajan further said India needs to find new sources of funding for infrastructure so that the debt levels remained 'moderate'.

"We need to develop new sources of risk capital. So that our infrastructure needs can be financed with moderate amounts of debt even as we help the system deal average," he added.