Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addressed a webinar on effective implementation of Budget provisions in DIPAM today through video conference.
Addressing the webinar, the Prime Minister said this budget has put forward a clear roadmap to take India back to the high growth trajectory. He added that the budget also focuses on the strong contribution of the private sector in India’s development. He stressed on the importance of Disinvestment and Asset Monetization. He added the time and needs of the country when the public sector enterprises were started were different from today. He said the biggest goal of these reforms is to properly utilize the public money. Many Public sector enterprises are loss making and are supported by taxpayers’ money and due to this the economy is also burdened. He said Public sector enterprises need not be kept running just because they’ve been running for so many years. He said it is the responsibility of the government to give full support to the enterprises of the country but at the same time, the Government has no business to be in business.
The Prime Minister said that the focus of the Government should be on the welfare of the people and on the development related projects. He added that the Government works with several limitations and hence it is not easy to take Commercial decisions. He said that the effort of our government is to improve the standard of living of the people, besides reducing the government’s unnecessary interference in the lives of the people. He added that that is, there should be no lack of government or influence of government in life. He said there are a lot of underutilised and unutilized assets in the country and the National Asset Monetisation Pipeline was announced with this in mind. He said that the Government is going ahead with the mantra of ‘Monetise & Modernise’ and when the Govt monetises, that space is filled by the private sector of the country. He added that the private sector brings investment and best global practices with them.
The Prime Minister said the money that comes from monetization of public assets and privatisation can be used in public welfare schemes. He added privatization would empower the youth with better employment opportunities. He said that the Government is committed to privatize all the sectors except strategic ones. A clear roadmap for investments would be drafted. This would create new investment opportunities and immense employment opportunities in every sector.
The Prime Minister said the Government is moving in this direction with full commitment, with equally high priority on the implementation of these policies. He also said that to ensure transparency and our procedures are correct to ensure competition, it is very important to have a stable policy.
The Prime Minister said an Empowered Group of Secretaries has been formed to connect with the investors and remove their issues rapidly. Likewise single point of contact for the investors have been made to improve the ease of doing business in India. He said over the years, our government has continuously reformed to make India an important destination for business and today India is equipped with one market-one tax system. He said today companies in India have excellent channels for entry and exit. He added that we are constantly making complexities related to compliances simpler and quickly solving logistical problems and today, India’s tax system is also being simplified and transparency is being strengthened.
The Prime Minister said that India has taken unprecedented reforms on FDI policy and Production Linked Incentive has been introduced to encourage investors. He said this has resulted in record inflow of FDI in the past few months. He added for developing Aatmanirbhar Bharat, we are swiftly working on modern infrastructure and multimodal connectivity. He said that in the next five years, we would be spending Rs 111 trillion to upgrade our infrastructure through the National Infrastructure Pipeline. He added that these expectations of the world’s largest young nation are not only from the government, but also from the private sector and these aspirations have brought a huge opportunity of Business so let us all use these opportunities.
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