Up to India Inc to take risks now as my govt has ushered bold reforms: PM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said his government had taken a host of bold economic decisions such as scrapping retrospective tax and initiating farm and labour reforms, and called upon India Inc to enhance its risk-taking appetite to take advantage of them.

“The government is doing reforms not out of compulsion but out of conviction,” he said while addressing the annual session of the Confederation of Indian Industry.

“The reforms that we undertook were not easy or ordinary; they were being talked about for decades. However, decisions were not taken because it was conceded that bringing about changes was difficult. But we took these steps with determination and, in fact, continued with the reform process during the pandemic,” he said.

The government decided to end retrospective taxation to correct the past mistake, he said, adding that the move had gone down quite well with industry. “I firmly believe that trust will strengthen between the government and industry. The government is ready to take big risks in national interest. Now, industry should also enhance its natural risk-taking tendency,” he said.

While investors were scared of the taxation policies of the previous governments, the country now has competitive corporation tax rates at the global level as well as a faceless tax system, Modi said.

The prime minister said the economy was picking up pace with the efforts of industry. “There is rarely a day when a CEO does not issue a statement or there is not a report on new opportunities. We are reading reports of record hiring by the IT sector.”

He said the Factoring Regulation (Amendment) Bill would help small businesses access loans, while the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (Amendment) Bill would help small depositors.

Modi said the government was opening up the strategic as well as non-strategic sectors for the private sector, citing the decisions on commercial mining and the opening up of the space and atomic sectors for India Inc.

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He said the country was full of self-confidence in various fields, including sports, as displayed in the Tokyo Olympics. “Start-ups are brimming with self-confidence. There were only 3-4 unicorns in the country in the previous seven-eight years. There are about 60 unicorns now,” he said.

Talking about the listing of start-ups, he said this was the beginning of a new era for the Indian markets. The prime minister’s remarks came weeks after an overwhelming response to the initial public offer of food delivery platform Zomato.

“There was a time when we used to think that foreign products are better. Even our own brands which we had built after years of hard work were promoted under foreign names. The situation is rapidly changing. Today, the sentiments of citizens lie with products that are made in India. Industry will have to frame its policies keeping this changing reality in mind,” he said.

Amid protests over farm laws, Modi said efforts were being made to directly link Indian farmers with the domestic and overseas markets. This is in quite contrast to the old mindset where agriculture was supposed to be for sustenance only, he added.

He also cited four labour codes to bring home the point that industry and workers were entangled in a complex web of laws for years. All this has resulted in record foreign direct investment and foreign portfolio investment, he said.

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