This, coming after industry's complaints that this year's Budget lacks a reforms thrust, is a signal that policy-making can well become a rolling process, not confined to the Budget.
"Let me make an open offer. Please take two months and let us meet again on May 1... All chambers can make a list of what stands between you and 12 per cent manufacturing growth and we shall address them. Likewise, for the services sector, There is no iron law that says that the finance minister must do everything on the last day of February,"
Chidambaram said during his post-Budget interaction with industry. He would like to have the list of issues 15 days before the meeting.
Chidambaram said he was also willing to examine the taxation structure in telecom, but could do that only when factors affecting tax rates - licence fees, revenue-sharing, entry fee, access deficit charges and spectrum - had stabilised.
Responding to a query by Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal regarding the high tax rate of 10-14 per cent on mobile telephony, Chidambaram said, "Every day, I see fluidity in the rate structure. I am willing to address the tax structure the day after the telecom ministry tells me that the rates have stabilised... all issues have been resolved."
Justifying the decision to increase the minimum alternative tax from 7.5 per cent to 10 per cent, Chidambaram said there were a number of exemptions being enjoyed by industry and those should be removed one by one.
"The thinking has been that since the rest of the corporate sector pays 30 per cent tax, then for the zero tax- or MAT-companies, the threshold should be at least one-third. There cannot be a full exemption," he said.
Asserting that the rationalisation of the peak Customs duty was independent of the negotiations at the World Trade Organisation, the finance minister said he was also willing to examine a peak rate of Customs duty on finished industrial and consumer goods suggested by industry at the meeting on May 1.
"We are doing it not because of the WTO but autonomously, to make industry more competitive. The question is the pace. Fifteen years after liberalisation, we are still some distance away from East Asian rates... the pace is somewhat slow," he pointed out.
In response to a query on insurance and pension reforms, the minister said he hoped to introduce the Insurance Bill in the current session of Parliament and added that on pension, there was, by and large, an agreement and that talks were still on.
"There is a good change of pension being brought in this session if the two issues left are sorted out," he said.
Chidambaram said with the revenue deficit being pegged at 2.1 per cent and fiscal deficit at 3.8 per cent for the next fiscal year, the most powerful signal the government wanted to send to investors was that India was a fiscally prudent country.
The minister said, while the manufacturing and services sectors were growing at impressive rates, the Budget had tried to address the issue of credit and infrastructure for the farm sector.
"In April this year, we are planning to go to the World bank with a Rs 4,400 crore (Rs 44 billion) project for restoration of 20,000 water bodies spread over a command area of 14 lakh hectares," he said.
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