Even as the winter session of Parliament draws to a close next week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the Government is determined to push reforms, including the Insurance and Coal Bill, and will not allow “political obstructionists” to stop it.
“The choice is clear. You either reform or miss the bus once again,” he said, adding the government is clear that the course it has adopted was unalterable and therefore, despite challenges it is clear about the direction it has to follow.
Addressing captains of industry at FICCI's annual general meeting, the Minister said, “Political obstructionists are out to ensure that the issue does not come to the debating table of Parliament.”
The Insurance Bill and the Coal Bill await Rajya Sabha clearance but the Government has been unable to take up the discussion all week because of disruptions. In the Upper House, the Government is in a minority.
Jaitley said global slowdown is creating a natural flow of foreign investors to India and yet there are large areas of the economy that are crying out for reform. He said the greatest challenge facing the nation is the need to create a shared national vision on certain issues even as there is an ideological divide on several issues.
Further, stating that 2015 would be a year of challenges, the Finance Minister said that in the next year, priority of the Government will be to cross the six per cent GDP mark, improve revenues and deliver on the promise of comfortable lives of the people and then moving on to double-digit growth that the country needs.
On the GST reform bill, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha after a prolonged delay, Jaitley said an overwhelming majority of the States were enthusiastic on the reform as their fears about revenue loss in the initial years after the GST roll-out would be set at rest through a compensatory mechanism in the transition period.
The bill seeks to create a single tax for goods and services across the country from April 2016.
The Finance Minister said the new government has inherited a lot of unpaid bills of the previous government—the subsidy bill and the CST compensation, but hoped to meet the challenge of meeting the fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent.