Startup friendly tax measures in the forthcoming Budget: Arun Jaitley

Kick-starting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Start-Up India' campaign at Vigyan Bhavan at the national capital, Jaitley said the movement will make the government available the entrepreneurs at arm's length.

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Encouraging entrepreneurship in the country, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the government would come up with startup friendly tax measures in the forthcoming Union Budget.

Kick-starting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Start-Up India' campaign at Vigyan Bhavan at the national capital, Jaitley said the movement will make the government available to entrepreneurs at arm's length.

He also said the government and the Reserve Bank of India will over the few months add to the banks' ability to lend more.

Credit growth is critical to boost India`s sluggish economic growth but has remained subdued, with banks struggling with crippling bad debts and insufficient capital.

"The Reserve Bank (of India) and the government, acting in tandem, are going to add to bankers` ability to lend with vigour and in greater amounts," Jaitley said.

However, he gave no details.

He also said the government would be a facilitator for the Start-up campaign with very little or negligible interventions.

"Start-Up India will change conventions. Government will merely be a facilitator for start-ups," the finance minister said.

"We ostensibly broke away from the license raj in 1991, conceived with idea that government will decide which businesses can run," said Jaitley. "Our effort in last few years has been to restrict role of the state in policy domain," he said, assuring Start-Up India scheme will follow that path.

Expressing concern over the lack of start-ups in the country, Jaitley said the traffic to the North Block has reduced drastically, referring to the queue of businesspersons.

“We will end license raj for startups”, he said.