Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
met representatives of industry and trade unions Friday for
discussions ahead of the upcoming national budget and said
he would accord top priority to skill development to afford
better employment opportunities for people.
The finance minister, who kicked
off his pre-budget meetings Thursday, has already met
representatives of the agriculture sector and civil society
for their views and suggestions on various policy
formulations. State finance ministers, who hold the key to
implementing two crucial economic reforms measures -- the
pan-India goods and service tax and the direct tax code --
and members of industry chambers are next on the list for
such deliberations. The meetings with state finance
ministers is scheduled for Monday.
During his meeting with trade
unions, Jaitley said “skill development would be given
priority so that more and more trained workers join the
Indian economy.”He said the government will give due
consideration to the 10-Point Joint Charter of Demands given
by the central trade unions while formulating the budgetary
proposals, accordingly an official statement released after
the meeting.
Trade unions gave a joint
memorandum to the finance minister. One of the demands
include linking minimum wage to Consumer Price Index (CPI)
and fixing it for industrial workers at not less than
Rs.15,000 a month. Later in a separate meeting, industry
representatives pushed for rationalisation of tax structure
and revival of economic growth.
Advocating the need to remove
retrospective tax amendment, president of Confederation of
Indian Industry (CII) Ajay Shriram said: “At a time when the
Indian economy is struggling to regain its growth momentum
and investment sentiment is weak, frequent and retrospective
changes in tax laws, which are ambiguous and open to wide
interpretation, should be avoided to restore investor
confidence.”
Shriram stressed on the need for
exploring non-tax revenue option for augmenting revenue
while rationalising non-productive expenditure to contain
the fiscal deficit. “Revenue generation is dependent on the
economic activity in the country; revenues cannot be
enhanced by prescribing artificially high targets for the
tax officers,” said Sidharth Birla, president, Federation of
Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), while
addressing the need for easing tax norms.
Birla said the government should
make earnest efforts to move away from the aggressive
revenue approach and provide a genuine non-adversarial and
conducive tax environment. “A major setback to the
investment climate in India in the recent times has been the
slew of retrospective amendments carried out in the tax laws
as a part of the Finance Act, 2012,” Birla said.
Secretary general of CUTS
International Pradeep Mehta suggested introduction of
competition and transparency reforms to contain inflation
and achieve high growth. In its memo given to the finance
minister, CUTS International highlighted four critical areas
of competition, public procurement, financial consumer
protection and fiscal management.
“Introducing reforms in these
areas would assist in containing inflation and achieving
optimal growth, while protecting the needs of vulnerable
consumers, and bringing transparency and accountability in
economic governance,” it said.
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