Time for 'Big Bang' reforms to boost investment,growth: Survey

Laying the pitch for the Modi government's first full-year budget, the Economic Survey today called for 'Big Bang' reforms, raising public investments to drive economic growth and improving business environment by making regulation and taxes less onerous.
The survey forecasts that the economy will grow by 8.1-8.5 per cent in 2015-16, as compared to 7.4 per cent in the current fiscal, and by 8-10 per cent in years thereafter, under a new calculation method.
"India has reached a sweet spot and... There is scope for Big Bang reforms now," it said, adding a political mandate for reforms and a benign external environment have created a historic moment of opportunity to propel India onto a double- digit growth trajectory.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who laid a copy of the Survey in the Lok Sabha, must in his budget tomorrow "continue the process of fiscal consolidation, embedding actions in a medium-term framework", it said.
"Decisive shifts in policies controlled by the Centre combined with a persistent, encompassing, and creative incrementalism in other areas could cumulate to Big Bang reforms," the Survey said.
The Budget should aim at creating a competitive, predictable, clean and exemption-light tax policy regime that will lower the cost of capital, incentivise savings and facilitate tax payer compliance.
Outlining the reforms needed to boost investment and growth, it listed improvements to tax administration, easing the cost of doing business, labour and land law reforms, rationalising subsidies, creating a competitive, predictable, and clean tax policy environment and accelerating disinvestment.

Talking to reporters, Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian, the author of the Economic Survey, said: "We are going to have moderated inflation, and shall overshoot the RBI's growth forecast".