Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday that the NDA Government, along with the Reserve Bank of India, will shore up the lending capacity of banks over the next few months.
He also said that in its endeavour to introduce a friendly tax regime, the Government will announce new rules through executive orders and also in the budget likely to be presented on February 29.
"The Reserve Bank (of India) and the government, acting in tandem, are going to add to bankers' ability to lend with vigour and in greater amounts," Mr. Jaitley said speaking at the opening session at the launch of the Government's Start Up India initiative.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will later on Saturday address the same conference. He is expected to announce a simplified regime for starting and funding new businesses in the country.
"Start Up India will be the final break with the Licence raj... Freedom will be given to the sector from the State," Mr. Jaitley said addressing an audience of potential entrepreneurs. He said he was not familiar with most of them and that it was the first time that it wasn't the "usual suspects" attending such a conference. He said that since May 2014 when Mr. Modi was elected to office, the traffic of industry visiting North Block building, where the Finance Ministry is, has ended.
The Government aims to truly end the licence raj and ensure that the role of the State becomes that of facilitating, he said.
On the global economy, he said, it had unquestionably slowed down and that "We can take limited satisfaction that even in a crisis like situation in the world, we are growing much faster".
He also said that credit growth is critical to boost India's sluggish economic growth but has remained subdued, with banks struggling with crippling bad debts and insufficient capital. For which he said government and the RBI were planning to take measures to add to banks' lending capacity.
