According to sources Prime minister narendra modi and Finance minister nirmala sitharaman are planning a series of tax alignments for equities in the coming weeks in a bid to further boost investor sentiment and bring in much needed foreign exchange into the government’s coffers, sources in the Finance Ministry and niti aayog told Awaaz.
Recently Sitharaman has been taking a series of bold steps in the past three months to kick-start growth in Asia’s second largest economy, which is witnessing a slowdown and the Finance minister has slashed corporate tax rates drastically to 15% for new units from 30% earlier; aggressively mounted a campaign to sell loss-making public sector companies; forced government departments to start spending budgeted allocations; pushed for quicker payments to outstanding government bills; nudged public sector banks to lend aggressively to small and medium sized enterprises and has also merged 12 public sector lenders to create four large banks in a bid to stem non-performing assets, give greater autonomy to government lenders and make them locally competitive to their private peers.
Moreover these steps have boosted stock prices and investor sentiment during the festival season. Foreign investor inflows have improved sharply and major indices are less than three percent away from record highs. The Nifty rose 43 points, or 0.5%, to 11,627 points on october 29. The 50-share index hit a record high of 12,103 points earlier this year.
