Don’t look for individual concessions, Jayant Sinha tells business houses

New Delhi: As the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government gears up to present its second full budget, junior finance minister Jayant Sinha urged business houses to stop seeking concessions that benefit only one or a few companies and, instead, come up with proposals that will benefit industry.

“Bring proposals for projects that will create jobs, increase the government’s tax revenue and improve global competitiveness,” he said.

Sinha was delivering the inaugural address at a national meet organized by the Public Affairs Forum of India, which has representation from large- and medium-sized Indian and foreign companies, on Friday. The finance ministry started the budget-making process in August, a month in advance.

The minister cautioned that proposals that are not in national interest will get lost in the prioritization process. “The government has limited bandwidth and time. Industry should bring practical solutions which are executable,” he said.

Emphasizing that solutions that are introduced by the government should be robust and self-correcting, Sinha said it is easy to fix issues with decisive interventions but it is important that these are process driven and bottom-up. The proposals should be in sync with the policy front, he added.

In the banking sector, the government had initiated a set of reforms under the Indradhanush plan, which was a bottom-up and process-driven way of fixing problems over time, Sinha pointed out.

As part of Indradhanush, the government has unveiled an action plan to revamp public sector banks, offering management teams the promise of performance incentives, including employee stock options, and introducing a policy under which each lender will be monitored on key performance parameters.

In what could give industry some comfort, Sinha said his ministry is trying to look at each case and added that there are no “locked cupboards”. “We are open and responsive,” he said.