Sinha to India Inc: come up with proposals that will enhance govt’s tax revenues

Businesses would do well to approach the government with proposals that would bolster tax revenues and not those that decrease revenues for the exchequer, said Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance.

“Those (proposals) which are going to decrease tax revenue, those requiring fiscal concessions are very difficult for us to accommodate. We need to increase tax revenues,” Sinha said at conference organised by Public Affairs Forum of India here on Friday.

Also, rather than seeking fiscal concessions that would benefit a particular company, public affairs professionals should bring forward proposals at an industry level, he said.

“We are all ears for proposals that advance national interest. Proposals that seek fiscal concessions for one company are difficult to handle for us. We cannot act for any single company,” he said, advising industry not to be “narrow minded” or focused on parochial interests.

Sinha also wanted Corporate India to come up with practical solutions.

“If your proposal comes in saying give me a fiscal concession and it is going to cost the government money and really what you are saying is transfer money from people’s pocket to my pocket. Those proposals are very difficult for us to act on," he said.

Stating that the government was an open and responsive one, Sinha said that it was absolutely plugged into social media as well as other formats of media like print.

“We are immersed in the media world. Every Ministry is paying a great deal of attention (to media). We are trying to separate the signal from the noise. It’s a noisy world out there,” he said.

Sinha also highlighted the importance of adhering to processes for achieving governance reforms. The process is as important as the end objective of better governance, he noted.

“We are in a policy making cauldron. We cannot tackle everything all at once. We have bandwidth issues in terms of execution capacity at the ground level, we have bandwidth issues about what can go through the legislative process, there are bandwidth issues in terms of decision making at the policymaker level...There are bandwidth constraints. So we have to sequence,” he said.

Later, Kevin Bell, Global Practice Chair for Public Affairs, Burson-Marsteller, UK said, “It was heartening to hear the minister engaging with business and determined to do the best for the people.

“It did remind me of the ministers in UK and other parts of the world who are realising that the prosperity of people depends on the growth in business of the country.”