Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said difficult decisions, such as demonetisation, passes through difficult phases initially. He said the Narendra Modi government’s decision to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes helped Indian economy open up significantly. “Indian economy has opened up, India is back on global radar,” Jaitley said at the Vibrant Gujarat summit.
The Union minister said the step had to be taken to fight corruption, black money and counterfeiting. “Excessive paper currency has its own vices, it leads to its own temptations,” he said. Jaitley said the government has been “repeatedly negotiating and renegotiating treaties with countries, which in effect was not solving the circulation of undeclared money”.
The finance minister further added that the Goods and Services Tax would help the country’s economy further. “The GST will also help merge all this and make India one common marketplace. It will lead to better and hassle-free goods and services. It will free many bottlenecks,” Jaitley said. The minister said the country’s economy would become cleaner and stronger after the new indirect tax regime was implemented. The government wants to roll out the new taxing system by April 2017.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the country is on the threshold of becoming the world’s largest and most digitised. He further added that it was also the world’s fastest growing major economy. “We are working to adopt and absorb newer technologies, to bring about transparency, and to end discretion,” he told the audience at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit.
Meanwhile, the World Bank reassessed India’s Gross Domestic Product projections from 7.6% to 7% after factoring in the demonetisation impact. The international organisation said the impact was temporary.
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