India to be extremely attractive business place

Greater digitization and formalization of the economy will encourage all kinds of start-ups and create an ecosystem both in term of tax incentives and provide capital, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told Singapore Fintech Festival on 15 Nov 2017.

He attributed the digitization and formalization to the ongoing strategies around Aadhar with financial inclusion, post demonetization and its thrust to digitization as well as implementation of the Goods and Services Tax since 1 July 2017.

India, as such, is set to become an extremely attractive place to do business in, said Jaitley.

Jaitley drew the conference attention to India’s recent achievement in the World Bank’s ranking on Ease of Doing Business. India made an impressive improvement to being among the top 100 on the index, up from 130 previously.

Jaitley, however, acknowledged short-term challenges for the country in implementing strategic initiatives such as demonetization and GST.

“But I have not the least doubt in my mind that for the medium to long term, this is bound to produce long-term returns as far as Indian economy is concerned,” said Jaitley.

The Minister painted a big picture of Indian economy, saying it is growing at a reasonable growth rate, integration of the informal with the informal economy as well as structural changes taking place and the tax base itself expanding.

A lot of transaction that took place through the cash economy, is today getting increasingly digitalize and going through the banking system, he told delegates at the festival. fii-news.com