NEW DELHI: State governments will now have to accelerate their move on ease of doing business to remove bottlenecks for investors and the taxpayer charter will help instil confidence and end harassment, a top official said on Sunday.
“Most follow-up now has to be done at the level of the states. The Economic Survey gives the example of, if you want to run a restaurant, you need 43 clearances. In those 43 clearances, I doubt if more than one or two would be at the central government level, the rest would be municipal, state, that is where the rubber meets the road. Investment climate will be improved now by reforms of state governance and ease of doing business,” NITI Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar told TOI in an interview.
“One of the biggest obstacles to improving investor sentiment is tax terrorism, which now has been finally recognised. Now you have a taxpayers’ charter, you got the dispute-resolution mechanism. The government wants the tax system to be hands off and the PM has reiterated this several times,” said Kumar, while reacting to the Budget proposals unveiled by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday.
Kumar said the Budget proposals will help improve sentiment, raise investment and boost overall growth, which is estimated to slow to an 11-year low of 5% in the current fiscal year.
“The real rise in growth comes through investment and investment demand and there I am very happy to note the Budget has several measures to improve the return on investment and also the investor sentiment. The dividend distribution tax has been removed, the impact of 15% concessional rate of tax not just on manufacturing but also on power generation, the tax concession to sovereign wealth funds, the tax concession to the builders plus the tax dispute-resolution mechanism.”
“All these measures will help to improve investment, which in turn will improve growth. The second part is the 20% increase in capital expenditure. So within the constraints of the fisc, these measures will boost investment and growth,” said Kumar, referring to the government’s move to relax the fiscal deficit target by 0.5 percentage points this year to boost spending.
Kumar said the Budget emphasis on improving the data system in the country would help usher in changes as the issue needs urgent attention. “Reliability, credibility, coherence, consistency and time — those are key features of a good statistics system. We must move towards that and sooner the better. We have neglected this for a very long time. Whatever it takes we must finish it in one or two years.”
Published On : 03-02-2020
Source : Economic Times
