Arun Jaitley: Climate for investment has improved

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said that the climate for investment has improved in the country since the Modi government came to power.

Speaking at the Rajasthan government’s two-day global investors meet Resurgent Rajasthan, he said the government’s policy initiatives to attract investment have begun to show results.

“India, in the last few months, has been following a policy with renewed vigour of attracting investment into the country. Public investment has significantly increased, FDI has considerably increased, and private sector investment is slowly picking up. We have eased all the rules as far as investment is concerned,” he said, adding that Rajasthan, which has organised the investor meet to attract capital and investment would certainly gain from this new investment chapter that India is writing.

Stating that the lack of a business friendly environment can turn away investors he said, “The ease of doing business is not merely a slogan. It means corruption-free governance, reasonable taxation and cutting down the time period.”

Mr Jaitley commended the Vasundhara Raje government’s successful efforts over the last two years to rescue Rajasthan from a precarious state of public finance and noted with satisfaction that the Resurgent Rajasthan Partnership Summit was a movement that marked a steady flow of investment into the state. He said that Rajasthan was the R of BIMARU states before 2003; it was Ms Raje’s hard work that led to urbanisation and development in infrastructure across the state.

Criticising the previous Congress government in the state, Mr Jaitley said the total debt of discoms was Rs 21,000 crore in 2008 but it increased manifold and became Rs 72,000 crore in the five years of Congress rule due to faulty pricing and regulations.

Citing this as an example, Mr Jaitley said that the debt of power companies was in a way responsible for choking country’ growth. The debt of power companies on their books forced banks to keep their cost of lending high to balance the risk of loans given to discoms, which in turn dissuaded industries from borrowing money for new investment and capacity expansion. However, he said that now the liberal policies of the NDA government have infused new confidence among the investors.

Ms Raje said, “We started a vision for Rajasthan during 2003-2008 and we are very reluctant to carry it forward. There is abundance of opportunities for everyone to come and invest in Rajasthan. Not only has our state excelled in agriculture but we have also made significant appearance on the global map.”

Several union ministers and corporate honchos announced projects for Rajasthan. Heads of major companies like TATA group, Reliance, Godrej, Aditya Birla group, Vedanta Resource and Hero Moto Corp, along with representatives of Singapore, South Australia, Japan and Italy spoke highly of investment opportunities.