Govt creating environment conducive to investments: FM

Government is trying to create a conducive environment, both in terms of taxation and ease of doing business, as investments won't come just by opening doors, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday.

The new government has endeavoured to restore credibility of the Indian economy and the decision making process in order to boost investments, domestic as well as foreign, he said addressing investors at the 'Urja Sangam' conference.

The government, he said, is focusing on "quick and effective decision making", as the country needs huge amount of investments.

"Investment has to be both domestic and international and for that we have to in the first instance open our doors for that investments. But merely by opening doors, investments won't come," Jaitley said.

The Finance Minister, who presented his first full year budget last month, said investors expect a conducive environment and a reasonable return. "...and for that conducive environment, what we popularly call ease of doing business... slowly but surely we have been taking steps in that direction," he said.

Jaitley further said that the government is undertaking some of the most significant taxation reforms.

He told the gathering that in the second part of the Budget Session, starting April 20, the government intends to go ahead with the Constitutional Amendment Bill on the GST, an ambitious indirect tax reform.

"I already said with regards to taxation, direct or indirect, the regime of enacting retrospectively or taking people by surprise is now over."

Our effort is to make direct taxation system not only non-adversarial but also globally compatible," he added.

Talking about the slump in global oil prices, Jaitley said both the government as well as the domestic oil companies have taken "very responsible positions".

"Huge benefits have been transferred to consumers.

This in turn helped us in containing inflation, which in turn has reversed the need of the increasing interest rates, at least we had two reductions (by the RBI...," Jaitley added.