GST, demonetisation having desired impact: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the government’s initiatives such as Swachh Bharat, goods and services tax (GST) and demonetisation are having the desired impact, the latter two resulting in increasing tax compliance and squeezing quantum of cash in the economy.

In his keynote address via video conference to the Berkeley India Conference on Saturday, Jaitley said there was public support to the reforms being undertaken by the governments of the day both at the Centre and state levels. “I do hope that India is able to retain its growth rate once again and live up to the aspirations of its people because we must not forget that we not only have a large population to service, we have a very young population to service,”he said.

Jaitley was scheduled to arrive in the US on Monday on nearly a week-long visit to interact with the US corporate world in New York and Boston and attend the annual meeting of International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington DC. With a young population there is not only a perception that they are being under-serviced, but also, they are becoming more and more aspirational, he said. “Time, therefore, is running against us,” Jaitley said. In the next one or two decades, if India has to take up the challenge of moving into a higher economic group country, “we have to grow at a much faster pace,” he said.

Responding to a question, he refuted the impression that transformational initiatives such as Swachh Bharat, GST and demonetisation have not resulted in any changes on the ground. “Would you say there were long-term benefits and the country would have to wait for those? Or was there any way to mitigate the problem being faced by the country,” he was asked. A more serious analysis, he argued, would show that even within matter of months there was a short-term positive impact of all these projects.

While demonetisation and GST were having desired impact in terms of tax compliances and squeezing the quantum of cash in the economy, he said for the first time, the Swachh Bharat campaign had brought to fore the importance of cleanliness.