SME Times News Bureau | 20 Dec, 2019
In pre-budget
consultations with leading industrialists, Finance and Corporate Affairs
Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday was urged to take further steps to
improve ease of doing business.
During an interactive session lasting over two hours,
prominent industrialists spoke about improving the regulatory environment to
safeguard investments through further easing in norms for doing business,
increasing export competitiveness, reviving private investment and
kick-starting growth via measures.
Airtel chief Sunil Bharti Mittal who was there at the meeting
said the government should act to make doing business easy in India.
On the telecom sector, he said tariffs are too low compared
to investments and he expects average revenue per user (ARPUs) to become around
Rs 300 in the near future.
"Conusmers have been enjoying very very low rates. But
we need to have a balance between requirement of investments and consumers on
the other side. So my view is Rs 200 ARPU, at a lower end Rs 100, and at the
upper end up to Rs 450-Rs 500 and therefore the blended eventual ARPU to be Rs
300 a month," he said.
"Blended eventual Rs 300 ARPU, which will still be $4 a
month, is, by far, the lowest anywhere in the world and yet consuming 2-3 times
more data than anywhere else in the world. Thats the balance we need to get
to," Mittal told reporters here after the meeting.
"Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) needs to
work on this because the industry has not been able to have a orderly mechanism
to get to that point. We are unnecessarily killing this industry in a manner
which is not conducive for the sector and that's why we need Trai
intervention," he said.
"There is a need to balance consumer interest and
investments", he added.
On the 5G spectrum allotments, Mittal said time for the
auctions this fiscal is too short.
RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group chief Sanjiv Goenka said the
discussions centred around the measures to stimulate growth, ease of doing
business facilitations and some stakeholders also suggested a cut in personal
income tax. There were deliberations on infrastructure and the power sector as
well.
"We all recognise that it may take 2-3 quarters to get
the excess capacity utilised," he said.
According to a Finance Ministry statement, industrialists
suggested many ways to boost the rural economy, especially ways to increase
consumption. Other suggestions included ideas to improve the Insolvency and
Bankruptcy Code (IBC) in relation to the National Company Law Tribunals (NCLTs)
and banks, faster mergers, acquisitions and demergers processes, ways to reduce
time for FDI approval, structural changes in laws for effective and stable
business environment, time-bound decisions for augmenting ease of doing
business both at Central and state levels, new capital investment for building
infrastructure, among others.
The meeting with Sitharaman was attended by Minister of State
for Finance Anurag Thakur, besides the various Secretaries of concerned
ministries, the Director General of Foreign Trade, the Chairman Central Board
of Direct Taxes, Chief Economic Adviser K.V. Subramanian, and other senior
officials of the Finance Ministry, the statement added.