: The Centre will take some special steps on pushing public investment to drive economic growth within the constraints posed by the fiscal deficit, Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley said here on Monday.
“Even with the present constraint of fiscal deficit in revenue, it’s a challenging and a difficult opportunity for us. But I think we have to take some special steps as far as public investments is concerned,” he said in an interaction with members of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
As part of this, roads and highways and infrastructure projects would receive special focus from the government. “The increased excise duties on petrol and diesel will not go into the Consolidated Fund of India but will be used to invest in development of roads and highways,’ Mr. Jaitley said.
Seeking to temper expectations ahead of the upcoming Union Budget for 2015-16, Mr. Jaitley said that policy announcements could be made outside the Budget too and that the Budget is “only one day in a year”.
Referring to the Reserve Bank of India’s interest rate cut last week, Mr. Jaitley said: “The process of rate cut has started. I see it as beginning of process and therefore in times to come it will give a further boost. So this year is going to be much better than last year, though not a great year.”
Mr Jaitley underlined the need to rationalise subsidies and referred to the market pricing of petrol and diesel and direct transfer of cooking gas subsidy to consumers’ bank accounts from January 1 as proof of the government’s determination on that front. The Modi government had spent the last 7-8 months in just restoring credibility, he said, pointing out that the adversarial taxation policies of the UPA government had scared investors away. “We are struggling to make taxation policies non-adversarial,” the Finance Minister said.
The Centre has received encouraging response from the States for the implementation of Goods and Services Tax, Mr. Jaitley said.
