FM’s thoughts on Oil & Loan Waiver

Jaitley’s talk at the ET awards, “Users should pay for oil… else fiscal deficit will rise and add to the current account deficit. It will push up inflation, weaken rupee. Tax on fuel prices should come down not by creating fiscal deficit, but through an increase in the non-oil tax to GDP ratio, which is on the rise since last few years. We must create a sense of maturity among people” Very nice thought, if we contribute by way of higher compliance, it will help in getting other benefits.

It felt like, we have only been asking without contributing. When we talk about this to people, they get agitated about paying taxes. It is because, for generations we have been on the receiving end.

Want farm loan waiver, how can that happen? Vice president Venkaiah Naidu said, “Loan waiver can happen only if there is a deposit waiver’. We did not want FRDI to come because we stated poor man’s money in the banks should not get used for the bank’s non-competence. All the deposit holders should be given highest safety on their investments. At the same time banks should waive off loans. This can happen only from the profits that banks make.

And unfortunately our banks don’t have that edge too, because of people running the banks who don’t have big vision.

Happened to hear a banker say that, “De-Mon was good and GST was good, while it was wrongly timed and not executed well. Government should have planned well to avoid the problems that it came across in implementing both these great reforms.”

We are the world’s biggest democracy having diversity of Africa to Europe in our mindset. When it comes to paying taxes we are like Africa, the most corrupt. There could not have been an opportunity to learn from some others mistake before bringing these two reforms. We should only learn from our own experiences. That is how it can be…..

There is an urgent need to move out of the comfort zone of protectionist mindset to accept reality & face the world as it is. It will strengthen us as a country and prepare us to have more luxuries.

 

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