Finance minister asks industry to focus on eduction and health sector; labour reforms on agenda
Along with taking the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product (GDP) to 25% from current 15% and pushing labour reforms, services sector is also on top of the government's agenda.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said the government would make all efforts to give a fillip to the manufacturing sector, and also asked the industry to identify new areas in the service sector such as education and health.
"We should focus on low hanging fruits like tourism, research & development education among others, where it is easier and quicker to achieve results," Jaitley said inaugurating the Services Conclave 2014 in New Delhi.
He said a few areas of services sector had to be identified and capabilities built around them to seize the emerging opportunities.
"India could emerge as a regional educational hub. This not only would reverse the trend of Indian students going abroad for higher studies but also could attract students from developing countries to come to India. For this, the quality of education should be considerably enhanced and the objective should be to catch up with the best education institutions in the world," he said.
He also referred to the huge potential in the health sector for attracting patients from other countries, who could undergo complex treatments at very affordable prices.
"A competitive environment was important to upgrade the skills and expertise," he said.
Jaitley, whose ministry has embarked upon the budget making process , said, "There are many issues that have to be addressed, such as labour reforms, facilitating capital flows, strengthening of infrastructure and trade facilitation measures." He said the government would address these issues in right earnest to enable different segments of industry to grow faster.
On WTO deadlock, he said patriotism does not work in a consumer driven market.
Jaitley said the definition of globalisation has undergone a change.
"It is now consumer driven and no amount of patriotism and jingoism can drive consumers to buy products. They go for quality and price competitiveness," he said.
The positions taken by various developed countries against Business Process Outsourcing in the case of IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) has fallen flat because the consumers wanted to have best products at affordable prices, he said.
45% of indirect tax target achieved
Indirect tax revenue collections rose 5.6% to Rs 285,126 crore during April-October 2014 as against Rs 269,909 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal. This is an overall achievement of 45.7% of the target for this fiscal. Service tax collections increased 10.9% from Rs 81,758 crore in April-October 2013 to Rs 90,673 crore during April-October 2014. With this, 42% of the target fixed at estimate for 2014-15 has been achieved. Collections from customs increased from Rs 98,707 crore during April-October 2013 to Rs 106,123 crore during April-October 2014, registering an increase of 7.5%. This is an achievement of 52.6% of the target.
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