Will put taxation issues to sleep: Jaitley

NEW DELHI: A number of taxation issues have been put to rest, and the effort is to put to sleep the remaining ones, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday.

“A number of them (the disputes) have been put to rest. We are trying over the next few days itself that many others can be put to sleep, either by a judicial resolution or an executive resolution,” Jaitley said at the India Economic Convention organised by industry chamber FICCI.

Promising more reforms, including bankruptcy code, expedition of arbitration procedures and public procurement laws, the finance minister said the aim is to make fundamentals of the economy sound so that it can withstand the global turmoil.

Commenting on the performance of states in the ease of doing business index, Jaitley said they are competing with each other by rationalising procedures and bringing about reforms. “It is the new-age state,” he said, calling the performance of states such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha “remarkable”.

Jaitely said small and medium enterprises holds key to absorbing the large workforce who have diverted from agriculture, as the services sector has limited capacity and employment generation in large industries is limited. “Kick-starting our manufacturing sector and its growth rate is one of the various challenges to the Indian economy today. If we can handle that problem, its ability to absorb a number of people coming from rural India and adding to India’s growth story is going to be much larger,” he said.

Emphasising that the focus of the government is on increasing wealth and enhancing productivity of existing resources, Jaitley called the development model, with focus more on re-distribution, “obsolete”.