‘Reforms taken by govt created solid footing for investments to take-off’

Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Guruprasad Mohapatra also said that they are working to further reduce compliance burden for industry.

New Delhi: Reforms like reduction in corporate taxes and introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) under taken by the government have created a solid footing to boost investments into the country, a top official said on Thursday.

Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Guruprasad Mohapatra also said that they are working to further reduce compliance burden for industry.

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He said that foreign direct investment (FDI) into India “is booming”, even in the times of COVID-19, and expressed hope that this growth would continue.

“Our reforms in the insolvency and bankruptcy code, our reforms in corporate taxes, GST, labour and agriculture — all have created a solid footing for the investments to take-off and that is also evident from our constant improvement in our ease of doing business,” he said at CII’s partnership Summit.

FDI into India grew by 15 per cent to USD 30 billion during the first half of the current fiscal.

Mohapatra added that certain reforms are like “unpalatable medicines” but they are needed.

Talking about India, Japan trade, he said the bilateral trade “is not of the volume that we would expect such close allies to have”.

There are lot of work to be done on both the sides on that front and “I hope that we will be working very closely and we will see lot of improvements on that,” he added.

The bilateral trade has dipped to about USD 17 billion in 2019-20 from USD 17.7 billion in the previous fiscal.