Government following policy to attract investment: Jaitley

The government is following a policy to attract investment and has "eased all rules" in this regard, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday.

"India, in the last few months, has been following with renewed vigour a policy of attracting investments into the country... we have eased all the rules as far as investment is concerned," Jaitley said, addressing the 'Resurgent Rajasthan Partnership Summit 2015' here.

He said various initiatives of the Narendra Modi government led to "considerable" increase in public investment and foreign direct investment, while the private sector investment was "slowly picking up".

Jaitley asked the states to take steps to ensure "ease of doing business", otherwise they would lose out to progressive states which were resorting to reforms for attracting investment.

"There has been a healthy competition among states to attract investment. If they do not provide conducive environment, there is always a choice of migration (for industry)," he said.

The finance minister advocated a "corruption-free governance with least scope of discretion" and "reasonable" taxation to attract investment.

Jaitley said banks were under stress due to huge debts of state electricity boards, leading to difficulty in lending to other sectors.

"Banks themselves are under stress, which has led to a situation that banks find it difficult to lend money to other sectors. So, it causes adverse impact on the national economy," he said.

Praising labour reforms undertaken by the Rajasthan government, he said: "Rajasthan should now endeavour to become a pioneer state in ease of doing business, where land is easily available and sanctions are easily granted."