The Indian government will look at pushing for greater levels of reforms across sectors to bring in ease and improve the country’s investment potential.
According to Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog, wealth is created by private sector and the government must make things easy for them as facilitators and catalysts.
“India is determined to carry out reforms. We need more and more of reforms and the government will push for greater levels of reforms across sectors to make things easy and simple. The basic philosophy of this government is that wealth is created by private sector and we must make things easy for them as facilitators and catalyst and we continue to push all reforms in that direction,” Kant said at the Partnership Summit 2021 organized by CII in association with Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Monday.
In the years following global financial crisis, private investments stagnated in India. Reforms were necessary to boost India as an investment destination and the series of reforms, both economic and governance, undertaken by the government has enabled private investments and entrepreneurship to thrive in the country.
According to Kant, there is no shortage of resources in the country and the government has been pushing individual ministries to ensure that asset monetisation is being done across sectors.
“We are asking state and central ministries to accelerate the process. Our job is to push individual ministries to bring in more and more asset monetisation so that there is greater productivity and efficiency in the country,” he said.
Talking about the role of states in ensuring development, he said, in a federal polity in a country as vast as India there is a need to push for change through the states.
“One of the key things we have done is we have started ranking states in education, health, sustainable development goals. We should try and ensure that increased funding goes to those states which are delivering some of these reforms and push the agenda for growth in due course. We handhold states so that they can bring a greater level of ease of doing business,” he pointed out.
According to him, reforms cannot be seen in a piecemeal fashion and there has to be pieces in the puzzle that form part of the big picture. All these reforms will have the potential of boosting of India’s investment prospects and ensuring the country’s growth is sustainable.
The government will further work with the private sector on the areas of renewable energy and green hydrogen. “We will work with private sector closely on these areas because there is no future for fossil fuel based products,” he said.