World praising India for reforms like demonetisation, GST: Jaitley

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said that countries across the world are lauding India for having the guts to bring in major structural reforms like demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST).

In an exclusive interview with ANI, the Finance Minister, who was in US to attend annual meeting of the IMF and World bank, said that the comments made by the experts worldwide on India's structural reforms underline the country's confident image.

"The comments made by the experts here in US and other countries, on India's structural reforms, highlight our countries self-confidence. The economy of various countries was going through recession since past three years and that time India was comparatively in a better state. So, we took advantage of this and introduced various structural reforms including Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, demonetisation and GST. It needs a lot of courage and guts to bring in structural reforms in the economy. What I gather here and what people from all parts of the world are saying is that 'it is laudable that India has courage to bring in such structural reforms," Jaitley said.

The Finance Minister slammed the Congress party for criticizing the structural reforms introduced by the government and said that the opposition's criticism has no weightage.

"The aim of demonetisation was to crack the backbone of shadow economy, which was running on black money. To curb the menace of black money was never Congress' priority. So now they are tensed, and it is justified. Talking about GST, it was Congress' proposal and now they are trying to change their stand. Finance ministers of all Congress run states back the GST but Congress being an opportunist party is opposing the uniform tax reform. So I think Congress' criticism has no strength," he added.

Ever since the Centre has introduced demonetisation and GST, the Congress party has been critical of the reforms.