The Indian Finance Minister on Sunday also said India would “look forward to enhancing its engagement with China and Hong Kong in economic investment and trade areas,” according to an official statement. “Perhaps, this was one of the tougher challenges we had”.
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In reply to a question on the pending tax disputes involving Vodafone, Cairn and Shell and his recent comments that a resolution is closeby, Jaitley said, “We inherited a legacy of several tax disputes. I am seized of the matter and we are very eager to reach a resolution”, he said during his media interactions here. “In the last two months, we have moved much faster, but markets have been in somewhat turmoil”, he said in reply to queries on whether the market conditions would impact the disinvestment drive. Addressing global investors in the worldwide financial centre, Jaitley said the government is continuing with its reforms agenda, although it still has a lot of distance to cover in terms of changes and reforms. In the next three years, we would have complied with Basel III norms.
“Authority rests with RBI” Making a strong case for rate cut by RBI later this month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said monetary policy plays an important role in stimulating growth and is hopeful that it will appropriately act with a sense of responsibility on this front. The rupee has performed much better than most global currencies. Noting that stalled projects had impacted the balance sheets of private companies in India, Jaitley said the proposed national investment and infrastructure fund would be a “great enabler” to attract investment, as well as help fix the balance sheets of affected firms. In April 2015 HKTDC opened its second office in Delhi after Mumbai and would be organizing visits of business delegations to India, she added.
On border issues, Jaitley rejected the suggestions that it’s proxy war-like situation.
China’s Communist Party-run Global Times in a May editorial said Sino-Indian cooperation should not be held hostage to western suspicion. “Therefore, if the policy rates come down over the next year or so, certainly this is one sector which has a huge potential to grow”, he said.
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Talking about India’s ranking in the World Bank’s ease of doing business, which was 140th position past year , he said it will improve in the future. “Investors have felt in the past that the procedures have been hard in India”, he said. Jaitley will address investors at the Capital Markets and Institutional Investors’ Summit organised by the Asia Pacific Investors Cooperation today.
