Efforts will be to bring corporate tax below 25%: Finance Ministry

New Delhi: Finance Ministry on Friday said the roadmap for lowering corporate tax from 30 percent to 25 percent will be announced in the Budget, with a long-term plan to lower it further.

Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said the Mimimum Alternate Tax (MAT) will become irrelevant over a period of time once the corporate tax rate is lowered.

"All these companies paying 30 percent will slowly move to 25 percent. The effort is to over a period of time reduce it further so that India remains attractive destination for attracting investment from abroad," Das said at the Ficci AGM here.

The roadmap for phased reduction of corporate tax from 30 percent to 25 percent will be unfolded as part of the Budget, he said.

"India remains attractive for domestic investors and has a simpler tax climate where there is less litigation. Decision to reduce corporate tax is a timely decision. It's a game changing decision," Das said.

When asked whether the government will look at scrapping MAT, Das said, "No decision has been taken. MAT will become irrelevant over a period of time."

MAT is the minimum tax which the companies are required to pay on book profits.

Asserting that reforms are necessary for economic growth, Das said, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will be rolled out sooner than later. "Administratively, both the Government of India and state governments are in state of preparedness," he said.

The government had fixed the deadline of rolling out of GST from April 1, 2016 which is likely to be missed as the Bill is yet to be passed due to stiff opposition from the Congress in the Rajya Sabha.

"There is no bar in introducing it in the middle of the year. So let us see when Parliament passes the Bill," he said.

Commenting on delay in the GST passage, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) secretary Amitabh Kant said politics of India is not in sync with economic ambition of the country.

"You have the government with a two-third majority and yet the politics of India is not in sync with economic ambition of India. The mandate of this government is to drive growth...if politics is not enabling you to drive that growth then we need to think...," he said.

"People of India have given mandate for growth, we want growth and you have the Upper House which is not enabling reforms to carry on. So, India needs to really think whether there is dysfunctional politics and whether we need to restructure politics itself to enable reforms in a much bigger way," he said.

If the political logjam continues it will be very difficult to bring legislative changes, he said.