New Delhi: Promising continued policy push to boost economic activities and investment flows, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said domestic reforms will “neutralise” any adverse impact of the global slowdown.
Addressing the BRICS investment seminar ahead of the 5-nation Summit in Goa on October 15-16, he said the government has put FDI on automatic route in almost 90% of the areas that are eligible for foreign direct capital.
“Over the last two-and-a-half years most of the sectors have been reviewed and we now have probably the most open FDI policy in the world with 90% of FDI coming in through the automatic route,” he said.
Stating that the ease of doing business has improved massively since the Modi government came to power, Jaitley said many sectors have been brought into the automatic route and now we don’t have any instance of cases pending indefinitely before the Foreign Investment Promotion Board.
“We have learned that notwithstanding the fact that there is a contraction as far as global growth is concerned, at least by domestic reforms we can neutralise the impact of the ongoing global slowdown,” he said.
On India’s global competitiveness ranking, which has improved to 39 this year, he said many policy changes in the recent past have added to the ease of doing business.
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Jaitley said various policy measures and “every significant decision of the government are aimed in one direction, that is to promote economic activities and make India more investment friendly”.
“Our ranking both in the ease of doing business and also in global competitiveness index has moved up significantly in the last few years. And this has been aided by a large number of policy initiatives which have been taken by the government,” Jaitley added.
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Lauding the states for their competitive spirit in making themselves business-friendly, he said: “the other silver lining is the states have also become extremely competitive and more investment-friendly”.