Retroactive taxation needs to be avoided, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, on Tuesday said that the government is focused on stable fiscal regime and added that retroactive taxation is something which needs to be avoided.

"We want a clear and stable fiscal regime. The government has been repeatedly sharing its concern that retroactive taxation is something which needs to be avoided but as far as resolution is concerned the finance ministry is looking at that," added he.

Prasad said that government would ensure that spectrum sharing, trading and enlargement were all being carried out in a fully transparent manner for country's growth in technology.

He also said that the government will develop green-field manufacturing clusters for electronic good in eight cities. The cities are Bhopal,Bhubaneshwar, Hyderabad, Maheshwaram, Bhiwadi, Jabalpur, Hosur and Kakhanada.

The Ministry has also identified 8 new areas for Modified Special Incentive Subsidy Scheme. This area includes Ghaziabad(UP), Vadodra and Gandhinagar(Gujarat), Nagpur, Nasik, Aurangabad and Thane (Maharashtra).

Prasad also said that he was in the process of working out a transparent arrangement for the Spectrum related issues keeping in view the twin objectives of consumer welfare and the country's growth in the field of mobile telephony.

"My government will ensure that spectrum sharing, spectrum trading; spectrum enlargement all must be done in a transparent way with twin objective in mind. One is consumer welfare and number two is country's growth in mobile telephony," he said.

He emphasized that improvement of BSNL and MTNL both in terms of performance and infrastructure would be an important area of this priority. He would be playing a pro-active role in monitoring functioning of the two bodies.