FM pitches for low taxes, taxpayers as ‘partners not hostages’

The Finance Minister said that India was on its way to have a much more modern taxation system.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is in Washington to participate in the meetings of IMF and World Bank.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday that after the Modi government decided to increase the States’ share in Central taxes in line with the 14th Finance Commission recommendations, not a single State government has introduced new levies and that this will have an impact on the economy.

“All States have now presented their budgets for this year and no new or additional taxes have been introduced…this will make manufacturing across India competitive for producers,” Mr. Jaitley said.

He was speaking at an event at the Peterson Institute of International Economics here.

Responding to a question on the International Monetary Fund’s projection released on Monday that India’s growth would overtake China’s this year, the Finance Minister said: “If in a given year we are numerically higher than their growth rate there are a lot of areas where we need to do a lot more than that.”

China managed average 9 per cent growth for three decades to reach where it was, he said.

Mr. Jaitley also said the financial year that ended on March 31 was one in which the Centre’s receipts from disinvestment were highest ever. “Numerically I have collected much more from disinvestment in a year than other governments since 1991 and this year we will do much more if not twice of last year,” he said.

Mr. Jaitley also said that as he announced in his Budget speech, the Modi Government would be going in for strategic sales during the year for some public sector units.