Union finance minister, Arun Jaitley, on Thursday said corruption does not exist in the Centre anymore, while applauding its proactiveness in implementing the GST, crackdown on excessive cash transactions, benami property, shell companies and so on.
“Corruption in the central government has become a thing of the past. This is happening in states as well. The present government has taken quick decisions whether it is implementing the GST or targeting subsidies are concerned. As far as black money and benami transactions are concerned, it is no safer in India to deal in excessive cash,” Jaitley said while addressing the 2nd India Investor Summit organised by J.P.Morgan in the national capital.
“India’s confidence as a nation has increased tremendously in the last few years. So far, we have been able to contain the impact of inflation post GST. There has been a positive move towards digitization, and remonetisation has been substantially completed. As far as bringing more items under GST is concerned, I think real estate is the most easy to bring in,” he stated.
The minister assured that the economic indicators are being assessed and appropriate action will be taken at the earliest.
The Centre is also focussing on the issue of divestment of Air India, for which a meeting is being chaired later in the day, Jaitley stated.
“As far as divestment is concerned, we never had any reservations about privatisation. In the last few years, the market was quite volatile at times, so the government had to wait for the right time for the divestment. We have an ambitious target for divestment this year. Even today, we have called for an Air India divestment meeting,” he said.
