India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Indian economy needs multiple engines of growth while the government focuses on reviving private investments. “We have a very noisy democracy, but I am finding that there are more people who want to support growth while others are a very minuscule minority. Any economy needs multiple engines of growth,” he said, at a session on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos.
“In the past, we had fewer such engines and we need a few more. Public investment is one that we are doing. We are concentrating on infrastructure and for the first time in history, we have been able to rationalise the subsidies. India is a noisy democracy but I am sure that we would be able to get all of them through. Some measures have got delayed but none of them actually hit a complete roadblock,” he said. About the proposed Goods and Services Tax Bill that stays pending in the Rajya Sabha, Jaitley said the GST legislation would go through as the numbers in India's upper house of parliament will change favourably soon.
“The paradox is that the party which drafted GST is not on board. But then the numbers in the Rajya Sabha are going to favourably change soon and I am hopeful that the GST would get through.” The BJP-led government expects the numbers to improve in the Rajya Sabha in April 2016, since a number of Congress members will retire in March and April. “Most states that grow will actually add to the country's growth rate. We are asking people from all over the world to become partners in India's infrastructure growth story,” he said. “I have always said the current rate of 7-7.5 per cent growth rate is not our real potential. We have the potential to add 1-1.5 per cent to this figure. There is still head space that we have and I am sure we would be able to reach that. We were expecting to grow over 8 per cent, but inadequate monsoon not only led to fall in agricultural production but also hit the consumption power of the rural economy.”
In a video message sent to a global conference in Singapore earlier, Jaitley said India was changing its taxation laws towards greater stability and predictability in the tax regime and trying to settle pending disputes.
