Later at another session put up by the Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce, Irani batted for the Narendra Modi-led Central government on the issues of non-performing assets (NPAs) and GST and painted a colourful picture of the present Central government.
Union textile minister Smriti Irani who was in Kolkata on Saturday said that the Centre would make it mandatory for jute mills to pay jute farmers their entire due before the mills’ dues are cleared by the Centre.
“Jute industry has a ready order worth Rs 5,000-5,500 crore every year. The government gives such a huge order so that the jute industry stays alive. The huge money is given to the jute industry in terms of order so that the farmers and labourers can get benefit out of it,” she said at an interactive session put up by the Indian Chamber of Commerce. She also said that the Centre will not give orders to jute mills which have complaints by farmers for getting their dues fully.
Later at another session put up by the Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce, Irani batted for the Narendra Modi-led Central government on the issues of non-performing assets (NPAs) and GST and painted a colourful picture of the present Central government.
Referring to the NPAs she said that to address a problem there had to be a recognition that the problem exists. She said that in 2014 during the UPA regime, the declared NPA was of Rs 2.5 lakh crore. “Many stalwarts in the industry felt this is not such a big problem. With the intervention of the RBI along with the government it can be addressed. But when the RBI did evaluate the nation was flabbergasted that the NPA burden left behind by the UPA regime amounted Rs 8.76 lakh crore. This is the first time that there was a factual recognition the burden of NPAs,” she said adding that it showed lending was done to non viable projects.
Again, talking about Goods and Services Tax (GST), she said that for decades there was a political Regime in Delhi that kept dragging its feet because of its inability to build a political consensus across the nation regarding GST. “They recognised that there was a need for physical discipline but avoided it to be politically popular. And when Modi became Prime Minister, he had publicly said ‘I have been left behind my house which is broken but I will build it brick by brick hotel blessings of the citizen of India’. Today the world hails the fact that GST is the Hallmark of cooperative federalism, of political consensus and then economy why many were out of the tax net today the sixth largest economies of the world with the implementation of GST,” Smriti said conceding that there were initial challenges and hiccups but the people and industry worked together with the government to ensure that those gaps were filled and challenges were met.
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