CHENNAI: The Centre is willing to do everything in its power to remove the trust deficit between industry and the government, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said here on Sunday.
The minister said the government has already taken steps to decriminalise offences under the Companies Act and expects the support of India Inc to realise the target of becoming a $5 trillion economy.
Delivering the centenary celebrations lecture organised by Nani Palkhivala Foundation on ‘Roadmap to $5 trillion economy’, she noted that over 60% of India’s GDP comes from the services sector with very less facilitation from the government.
“The government doesn’t want to see every business house with ‘suspicion’. It is not our intent. My first attempt, which continues even today, is to decriminalise everything to do with Companies Law or related laws,” she explained.
She was responding to Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran’s recent comment, “We need supervision, we don’t need suspicion. And we have suspicion. All our rules start from suspicion.”
Sitharaman noted the government has decriminalised 16 procedural offences, which will now not attract jail term.
“The path to $5 trillion economy would be a lot easier if built with trust between the government and industry,” she added.
She termed digitisation of India the “collateral benefit” of demonetisation.
The FM also said any revision to the Goods and Services Tax rates must be made only once in a year rather than every three months when the GST Council meets.