Need for easing entry barriers for MNCs to boost growth: FM

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also says there is a need to ensure stability in tax policies to sustain high growth and eradicate poverty

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said there is a need to ease entry barriers for global corporates and ensure stability in taxation policies to sustain high growth and eradicate poverty.

“Best response to poverty eradication is high growth rate. Sluggish economy cannot eradicate poverty. They can only distribute poverty,” he said, while addressing convocation of Management Development Institute (MDI) on the outskirts of national capital.

The Minister also underlined the need for relaxing norms for entry of multinational corporations to promote growth which he said is essential for creating jobs and raising the resources of the government.

“We have to make entry point into India easier for large global corporations to grow, for large Indian corporations to become global. We have to ease the process of doing business,” the Minister said.

He stressed on “ease of doing business, the stability of policy, the maturity of political decision-makers, the maturity of political process in reaching the correct decision rather than creating hurdles, from our infrastructure to taxation. We have to become globally competitive”.

The economy is likely to grow at 7.4 per cent in the current financial year and is expected to accelerate to 8-8.5 per cent in the next financial year beginning April 1.

Jaitley, in his budget speech, announced a host of steps to boost growth and improve ease of doing business. The National Democratic Alliance government had earlier relaxed foreign investment norms in various sectors including insurance and defence.

Parliament recently passed the Insurance Bill raising the foreign investment limit in the sector from 26 per cent to 49 per cent.

India, Jaitley said, does not need a “sluggish but active economy, a profitable economy where the revenues of the government are so large that it can actually bring up the standard of living of poor. The best response to poverty eradication is high growth rate. It enables the state to pull up (the standard of living of) the poor. It enables a state to have sufficient resources to feed the poor.”

Stressing that the world doesn’t look at obsolete societies, the Minister said, “They (global companies) look at futuristic society and it is that process which is going to generate more jobs...going to help us give jobs to our weaker sections.”

The effort, he added, is to create a “different India” which should not be entirely dependent on government.

“It's an India where everyone must get an opportunity to grow. It’s an India where the world must look at us as an ideal centre of investment, as a high return giving point of investment. We have to break away from the past...where our own entrepreneurs look elsewhere,” the Minister said.