Govt to ease process of doing business in India: Jaitley

Government is fairly determined and is introducing changes to ease the process of doing business and attract investments in India while trying to rationalise and lower taxes, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said.

He also said that the GDP growth rate this year would be 7.5 per cent and hopefully higher in the next year.

"We are trying to rationalise taxes, lower taxes and introduce a non-adversarial and fair system of taxation. There is a raging ideological battle between reform and obstruction. The government is fairly determined.

"The roadmap for us is very clear. We need a lot of investment in India and we need to ease the process of doing business in India and therefore slowly we are introducing changes in that direction," he said addressing a gathering of international investors on 'Investment Opportunities in India' here last night.

Jaitley stressed that the new government's priority was to improve the credibility of the Indian economy.

"Fiscal deficits are on the downside. There is a flurry of activities, we are correcting aberrations in taxation structure, we are concentrating on infrastructure and trying to bring about fairness in our system. 

"The success of the auction of Spectrum and Coal mines have shown how corruption could be avoided and bring higher values. We seem to be favourably placed," he said.

In an attack on the previous UPA government, Jaitley stressed on how scandals such as the Spectrum and coal field allocations are a thing of the past.

"If (former Prime Minister Manmohan) Singh had his way, the crisis would never have taken place but there was a sense of helplessness.

"With regard to coal, he had announced an auction process within months of taking over but for 10 years he was unable to go through with it. How can we allow such a system to continue," he said at the event organised by FICCI and UK Indian Business Council.

Speaking at another function launching the Union Bank of India (UK), a subsidiary of the Union Bank of India, Jaitley noted that India is emerging as one of the fastest growing economies and said that this year the GDP growth rate will be 7.5 per cent and next year hopefully it would be higher.

He said that since the new government came to power the economy has regained."During the last few years we had fallen off the radar, our growth had slowed down, our priorities were blurred and the world was accusing us of policy paralysis. Finally people of India decided to bring about a change," he said.

Without naming UPA, he said "the I (India) was falling off the BRIC. But today most of others are facing challenge while India is emerging as one of the fastest growth nations - This year we will close at 7.5 per cent GDP growth and next year hopefully higher.

At the same time, he noted that elimination of poverty is a major challenge and government is working hard to tackle this great challenge.