Govt committed to policy certainty, industry should take more risks: Finance Minister

New Delhi, Aug 25 (KNN) Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the government is committed to working towards ensuring policy certainty.

While interacting with industry captains at a Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) interaction held at Mumbai on Tuesday, she praised the risk-taking ability of the start-ups, and urged industry to also come forward and take risks and assured industry captains of addressing issues related to competitiveness including high power tariffs, and the issues related to cumbersome regulatory compliances.

She also said regulators also had a key role in ensuring the same and the government was working with them as well.

Expressing the government’s keenness to facilitate trends and sectors that were the future of the Indian economy, the Finance Minister acknowledged that there were seminal changes happening in the financial sector, which the government policy should facilitate.

"The economy is moving gradually from a bank-led lending model to a more market-based finance model. Also once the Development Finance Institution is operational, it will perform the function of long-term lending which traditionally has been done by banks,'' an official statement quoted Sitharaman as saying.

''This would increase competition for the banks and also improve their efficiency,'' she added.

She emphasised on the importance of government and industry working together to ‘create India’s own equity capital’.

Sitharaman also emphasised on identifying how the sunrise sectors and start-ups can contribute to the future of India and how the government could facilitate them.

The government believes in listening, working and responding and would extend all possible support, she said.

Dr T V Somanathan, Finance Secretary and Secretary Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, in his address emphasised that the government trusted wealth creators.

Responding to suggestions from industry, Dr Somanathan said the government was exploring instituting insurance bonds as alternatives to bank guarantees.

On the issue of arbitration awards being typically appealed, Dr Somanathan said a behavioural change was required.

On increasing the pace of vaccination, Dr Somanathan said the government had been very aggressive in procurement, even relaxing procurement guidelines.

''The constraint was on the supply side which was likely to be addressed soon, as new vaccines become available,'' he added.

Tarun Bajaj, Secretary, Revenue, Ministry of Finance, said the Department of Revenue was working on the tax related issues of start-ups and sought industry inputs on the same.

Earlier, while sharing the CII suggestions for a robust recovery, T V Narendran, President, CII, said for growth to take deep roots, sustained demand was critical, and the immediate source of demand had to be government expenditure.

Welcoming the Government’s push to capital expenditure, Narendran recommended frontloading of the committed capital expenditure, especially on infrastructure and added that the revenue buoyancy seen in the first quarter has created fiscal room for this front loading.